Insights from an Illegal Content Provider

One of the unexpected benefits of writing my book, Predictably Irrational, is the email I get from people. They discuss topics that range from raising kids to dealing with cancer to financial savings.

A few weeks ago I received an email. The sender had just finished listening to an illegal download of the audiobook and he wrote me how much he liked it. He then told me that he actually sells illegally downloaded content. But his email got even more interesting when he explained that some of the principles discussed in my book relate to his own life. For example, he described how he recently attempted to find a regular, legal job. But giving up the illegal business he had created and nurtured for five years was very difficult for him.

A second aspect of loss that he described was that of his social network of customers and friends who are linked to him through business ties. He proposed that the bond between himself and his customers is much deeper than the traditional retailer-consumer relationship. After all, in his line of illegal work the relationships have to involve more trust, reciprocity, and friendship. All of this makes it even harder to leave that circle.

This man eventually gave up his search for a legal job and went back to his life of crime. He knows his decision might lead him to prison. But he was simply unable to accept the loss of his business and social network.

The famous Economist Gary Becker proposed many years ago a model of the rational crime: Criminals would simply weigh the cost benefit of a prospective crime and act in their best interest. But as my pen pal's story indicates, the picture is much more complex. Decisions about crime also involve our desire to avoid loss, and the need for social meaning in our life.

I suspect that if we truly want to reduce crime we have to take into account a more complete set of human motivations, including our irrational tendencies.