> obey the letter of the law.

Oh wait you’re serious. Let me laugh even harder.

Breaking the law for a company is simple a cost of doing business. If that costs too ouch then the lobbying/bribe budget increases to cancel it out m, but most of the time it’s just a line of risk on the balance sheet.

In other words, for companies, the law is a continuous function, where for individuals it's a discrete one. Where you and me have to ask ourselves, "do I break the law or not?", big companies ask themselves, "what is the optimal level of law breakage?".

I think it’s continuous for people too. Do we ever drive faster than the speed limit? Cross a street outside of a defined crosswalk? Do we voluntarily report all our out-of-state purchases on state taxes? If we sell something on Craigslist, do we always report that as income?

I think a lot of people also have an optimal level of law breakage.

I agree there is a spectrum of compliance for your average person with the letter of the law and the reality of everyday life (and the meaningful consequence of breaking them). Jaywalking is very unlikely to have any meaningful impact to anyone, and mostly unlikely to be enforced.

But the big thing that separates your everyday person and companies is that corporations will gladly and willfully break the law, even in cases where they weigh the risk (perhaps they have a legal argument about how it’s not actually breaking the law, but it’s probably paper thin) because it can often be more profitable to commit the crime. and pay whatever fine is imposed than not commit the crime in the first place. It is incredibly rare for anyone to go to jail or be prosecuted individually for corporate crimes, and so the risk to any particular individual is exceedingly low.

I can’t really think of any reasonable example where I could commit a crime as an individual and come out the other side with a net positive, despite being caught/prosecuted.

Corporations aren’t playing with the same deck, and their bad behavior is constantly rewarded. Sure, they can sometimes go over the line and tank the entire operation but that is far and away the exception instead of the rule.

Selling some personal property at a loss (as is typical) is not income. The other examples are good ones.

People make money on Craigslist, selling services for example.

I'd argue it's not even quite that. Common law is not perfectly defined. So there aren't really levels of 'law breakage', but rather something more like, "what's the likelihood the potential legal costs of this outweigh the benefit?"

For some individuals it isn't even that:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28543096

Also there are plenty of gray legal areas. Often the questions are, "Is this really breaking the law? What is the risk?"

And even in cases where the managed 100% wants fully comply with existing law, there are still tradeoffs. How much do we fund internal enforcement and will that prevent us from being competitive? Which isn't so much about actively trying to break the law, but willing to risk that breakage will happen, or even naive trust of employees.

Or at least, which laws will someone go to jail for breaking vs us just getting slapped with a fine?

The first point is not about appeasing the machine… it’s about not overselling to your subordinate worker class because if they take the second point to heart they won’t buy it anyway. Just be honest and realistic and you’ll avoid looking like a crook, if you care. Maybe you don’t—you’re right such behavior is allowed in the rules.