5 ms·

His salary, in real terms, was pretty good by the way. Way more than I earned as a software dev for many years.

refurb 3y ago
I noticed that too. $38k in 1981 in Edmonton was firmly middle class. Plenty of homes cost less than $100k. Rent was in the $100-300 per month range for a nice 2 bedroom. Dude just got greedy. If he had skimmed $600 per week instead of $3000, he would have doubled his take home pay and likely never would have been caught. It would have amounted to almost $100k every 3 years which is a tidy sum back then.
- xpe 3y ago
  > Dude just got greedy. It seems to me that once a person builds an illegal habit, it demonstrates they: (a) probably have a higher risk tolerance than most people and/or an inaccurate understanding of the empirical risk level and/or (b) they have, perhaps only temporarily, found a self-interestedly-rational aspect of law/society to exploit. Once one's behavior crosses into that realm, "dude just got greedy" seems to miss the point. It was greed that got them there, right? How many optimally greedy criminals are there? I don't claim to know, but I'm suggesting that risk-adjusted _optimality_ and the criminal mind are not highly correlated. Anyhow, it doesn't seem the 'level' of greed was the problem; it was the level of spending; the article suggests that Kara's lifestyle upgrade attracted considerable attention. More generally, the risk-adjusted calculus between "steal a lot quickly" vs "steal a lot slowly" is interesting. First, being a repairman of said machines, he would be a suspect if any discrepancy was found. Second, dragging a larger-than-usual bags of coins to the bank for years seemed rather brazen. But perhaps the consistency of his behavior made it seem 'normal' to the local bankers? Putting both together, sure, larger amounts would attract more attention, but the relationship between intake and risk is probably not linear. As a guess, one might think halfing his intake might only reduce his risk by 10%. If so, a self-interested, amoral calculus might suggest that his intake was reasonable.
  - refurb 3y ago
    All good points. But there is also an element of "if they haven't caught me now, they won't ever". Risk tolerance increases over time.
  - toyg 3y ago
    > How many optimally greedy criminals are there? I don't know, how big is Wall Street nowadays? /s More seriously: it's likely that there are indeed a lot of "optimally greedy" criminals - it's just that we don't label them criminals, because they don't get caught. I guess the actual numbers are somewhat dependent on your trust in the ability of law enforcement. > perhaps the consistency of his behavior made it seem 'normal' to the local bankers? Perhaps it was just the '80s, when banks didn't really want to ask any questions. > the relationship between intake and risk is probably not linear. I agree there. Note that criminals do tend to understand this, typically regarding the results of conviction. It's the reason capital punishment is not really a deterrent: because once you pass the threshold (which is often with a single act), punishment does not grow prportionally, so they might as well do it over and over.
  - genman 3y ago
    He could have stopped stealing when he wanted to have a more lavish life style and they wouldn't be have been able to catch him (at least not red handed).
    - Scoundreller 3y ago
      If they improved their auditing and revised their models, they might get suspicious if dude quit and their revenue suddenly went up 25%. Or not ask any questions at all and get big bonuses…
  - rsynnott 3y ago
    > How many optimally greedy criminals are there? Bernie Madoff might be close to an example; his scheme kept going for an _amazingly_ long time, and he made some effort at times to reduce inflow to keep it somewhat under control. There was probably a world in which it only came out after he died; as it was he was kind of unlucky with the timing. Of course, there might be plenty of optimally greedy criminals out there, and you’ll never know; more or less by definition they do not get caught.

I noticed that too. $38k in 1981 in Edmonton was firmly middle class. Plenty of homes cost less than $100k. Rent was in the $100-300 per month range for a nice 2 bedroom. Dude just got greedy. If he had skimmed $600 per week instead of $3000, he would have doubled his take home pay and likely never would have been caught. It would have amounted to almost $100k every 3 years which is a tidy sum back then.

xpe 3y ago
> Dude just got greedy. It seems to me that once a person builds an illegal habit, it demonstrates they: (a) probably have a higher risk tolerance than most people and/or an inaccurate understanding of the empirical risk level and/or (b) they have, perhaps only temporarily, found a self-interestedly-rational aspect of law/society to exploit. Once one's behavior crosses into that realm, "dude just got greedy" seems to miss the point. It was greed that got them there, right? How many optimally greedy criminals are there? I don't claim to know, but I'm suggesting that risk-adjusted _optimality_ and the criminal mind are not highly correlated. Anyhow, it doesn't seem the 'level' of greed was the problem; it was the level of spending; the article suggests that Kara's lifestyle upgrade attracted considerable attention. More generally, the risk-adjusted calculus between "steal a lot quickly" vs "steal a lot slowly" is interesting. First, being a repairman of said machines, he would be a suspect if any discrepancy was found. Second, dragging a larger-than-usual bags of coins to the bank for years seemed rather brazen. But perhaps the consistency of his behavior made it seem 'normal' to the local bankers? Putting both together, sure, larger amounts would attract more attention, but the relationship between intake and risk is probably not linear. As a guess, one might think halfing his intake might only reduce his risk by 10%. If so, a self-interested, amoral calculus might suggest that his intake was reasonable.
- refurb 3y ago
  All good points. But there is also an element of "if they haven't caught me now, they won't ever". Risk tolerance increases over time.
- toyg 3y ago
  > How many optimally greedy criminals are there? I don't know, how big is Wall Street nowadays? /s More seriously: it's likely that there are indeed a lot of "optimally greedy" criminals - it's just that we don't label them criminals, because they don't get caught. I guess the actual numbers are somewhat dependent on your trust in the ability of law enforcement. > perhaps the consistency of his behavior made it seem 'normal' to the local bankers? Perhaps it was just the '80s, when banks didn't really want to ask any questions. > the relationship between intake and risk is probably not linear. I agree there. Note that criminals do tend to understand this, typically regarding the results of conviction. It's the reason capital punishment is not really a deterrent: because once you pass the threshold (which is often with a single act), punishment does not grow prportionally, so they might as well do it over and over.
- genman 3y ago
  He could have stopped stealing when he wanted to have a more lavish life style and they wouldn't be have been able to catch him (at least not red handed).
  - Scoundreller 3y ago
    If they improved their auditing and revised their models, they might get suspicious if dude quit and their revenue suddenly went up 25%. Or not ask any questions at all and get big bonuses…
- rsynnott 3y ago
  > How many optimally greedy criminals are there? Bernie Madoff might be close to an example; his scheme kept going for an _amazingly_ long time, and he made some effort at times to reduce inflow to keep it somewhat under control. There was probably a world in which it only came out after he died; as it was he was kind of unlucky with the timing. Of course, there might be plenty of optimally greedy criminals out there, and you’ll never know; more or less by definition they do not get caught.