Scientific Definition
Dense legal codes advantage well-resourced insiders who can navigate them.
Plain-English Definition
Dense legal codes advantage well-resourced insiders who can navigate them.
Feynman Explanation
The tax code is a participation tax on having a lawyer.
Core Principle
Dense legal codes advantage well-resourced insiders who can navigate them.
Mechanisms
Pending editorial review.
Dense legal codes advantage well-resourced insiders who can navigate them.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Complexity converts into rent for specialists.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Inputs (Triggers)
Pending editorial review.
Outputs (Behaviors)
Pending editorial review.
Behavioral Signature
The tax code is a participation tax on having a lawyer.
Examples
- Federal tax code's ~75,000 pages.
- Complexity converts into rent for specialists.
Pending editorial review.
Famous Experiments
Pending editorial review.
Design Principles
- Plain-language statutes. Simplification mandates.
Measurement Approaches
Pending editorial review.
Evidence
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
The Perverse Incentive Lens™
How this behavior is exploited — and how to redesign around it.
- Plain-language statutes. Simplification mandates.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Interactive Mini Network
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Knowledge Graph Neighbors
Auto-linked to the rest of the Human Behavior Taxonomy by family, domain, dimension, and shared keywords.
Charging by time rewards inefficiency and prolongs disputes.
Police agencies that keep seized assets gain a direct fiscal interest in seizures.
Fixed compliance costs scale punitively for small firms and entrench large ones.
Compliance programs designed to satisfy regulators, not prevent harm.
Stacking fines on low-income defendants creates debt traps and recidivism.
Decisions made to be defensible, not to be right.
Mandatory federal sourcing from prison factories crowds out small business and entrenches inefficient production.
Contingency-fee structures shape which cases get filed.
Fixed sentencing rules remove judicial discretion and inflate incarceration without reducing crime.
Trial penalties pressure even innocent defendants to plead guilty to avoid risk.
Per-inmate funding makes incarceration a budgetary asset for jurisdictions and contractors.
Caseloads far above professional norms guarantee weak defense for the poor.