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The Top Political Contributors
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Gender and the New Commanding Heights
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Jamie Galbraith Makes an Assumption
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Macroeconometrics: The Science of Hubris
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BRYAN CAPLAN
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The Effect of Thumb Sucking on Income
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Ability, Morality, and Prosperity: A Paper and a Report
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The Theory of Time and Frittering
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Male Variance and the Remnants of the Gender Gap
DAVID HENDERSON
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Hayek in "Unbroken", Part Two
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Hayek in "Unbroken"
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James Bovard on the Peace Corps
August 4, 2011
Summers Way Off on FDR and 1941
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The "Amazon" Tax
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It seems like you've just described tiers of social norms -
Tier 1 - stuff that almost everyone in your neighborhood does sometimes, and so people will generally overlook/ignore/shrug off that behavior in others, unless it is constant, in which case, you're probably bordering on Tier 2.
Tier 2 - stuff that happens occasionally in your neighborhood. If it happens with you more often than the norm, eyebrows will be raised. It will be talked about. Some of your neighbors will feel uncomfortable. If it happens constantly, you're probably bordering on Tier 3.
Tier 3 - stuff that simply doesn't happen in your neighborhood, at least not in anything exceeding trace levels. This is where people will get really uncomfortable with you. If it happens enough, you'll face legal trouble, vandalism, etc.
And you and your spouse represent the very small neighborhood at the center of the larger areas.
I added to my post in response.
So why do people bother to tip cabbies? I can't say I have ever had the same cab driver twice ever, and even if I am riding with someone, they can't see how much I am tipping the driver when I pay the fare.
The same is true whenever you are in a restaurant that you know you are unlikely to return to, the consequences of nor tipping, or of being extremely stingy, are nearly zero, yet I know I still tip in those situations.
While people do cheat and flout social norms more often when we can get away with it, I think that, as a social species, most people incorporate social norms into their personal utility functions to some degree. We comply with the rules not solely out of a fear of being caught, but in part also because we were raised with the norm and we prefer to follow it.
What Pandaemoni said. And I think keeping personal and work life separate is excellent advice. Ideally one's social life is firmly planted in the former category. One big barrier to this major component of QOL is the tacit assumption nowadays that people are expected to 'network.'
An obvious example is smoking marijuana. 90% of the US population says they don't know anyone who smokes marijuana. But 90% of the US population (not the same 90%) actually does know someone who smokes marijuana (about 10% of the US population smokes marijuana once a month or more).
Marijuana smokers hide their behavior from everyone except other marijuana smokers, in almost all cases.
Of course much of this has to do with illegality - who wants to go to prison because your neighbor turned out to be less tolerant of your illegal activity than you thought s/he would be?
Much, however, is simply due to the fact not that your neighbor will turn you in, but that s/he may express strong disapproval of your conduct. Ignorant, irrational, uninformed disapproval perhaps, but disapproval nevertheless, and thus a reason not to clue him/her in.