David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants

not, you pay back taxes plus about ten percent. If you are audited and you are found to be fraudulent you pay back taxes plus about 75 percent. So the expected cost of getting caught is just not that large. The calculus is tilted very, very heavily in favor of cheating.
    So why don’t Americans cheat? Because they think that their system is legitimate. People accept authority when they see that it treats everyone equally, when it is possible to speak up and be heard, and when there are rules in place that assure you that tomorrow you won’t be treated radically different from how you are treated today. Legitimacy is based on fairness, voice, and predictability, and the U.S. government, as much as Americans like to grumble about it, does a pretty good job of meeting all three standards.
    In Greece, the underground economy is three times larger in relative terms than that of the United States. But that’s not because Greeks are somehow less honest than Americans. It’s because the Greek system is less legitimate than the American system. Greece is one of the most corrupt countries in all of Europe. Its tax code is a mess. Wealthy people get special insider deals, and if you and I lived in a country where the tax system was so blatantly illegitimate—where nothing seemed fair, and where our voices weren’t heard, and where the rules changed from one day to the next—we wouldn’t pay our taxes either.
    The discussion of parades in marching season in Ireland comes from Dominic Bryan, Orange Parades: The Politics of Ritual, Tradition and Control (Pluto Press, 2000).
    Desmond Hamill’s account of the British Army in Northern Ireland is Pig in the Middle: The Army in Northern Ireland 1969–1984 (Methuen, 1985). The ditty that begins “On the 15th of August” appears on page 18. “The [IRA] retaliated” is on page 32.
    The statistics on deaths and violence in 1969 Northern Ireland are from John Soule’s “Problems in Applying Counterterrorism to Prevent Terrorism: Two Decades of Violence in Northern Ireland Reconsidered,” Terrorism 12 (1989): 33.
    The account of when General Freeland descended on the Lower Falls is told by Seán MacStiofáin in Seán Óg Ó Fearghaíl’s Law (?) and Orders: The Story of the Belfast Curfew (Central Citizens’ Defense Committee, 1970). The details about Patrick Elliman’s death appear on page 14. A good source on the curfew is Taylor’s Provos. The detail about the man in his pajamas comes from Nicky Curtis, Faith and Duty: The True Story of a Soldier’s War in Northern Ireland (André Deutsch, 1998).

Chapter Eight: Wilma Derksen
    The account of the history of Three Strikes relies on several sources, chief among them: Mike Reynolds, Bill Jones, and Dan Evans, Three Strikes and You’re Out! The Chronicle of America’s Toughest Anti-Crime Law (Quill Driver Books/Word Dancer Press, 1996); Joe Domanick, Cruel Justice: Three Strikes and the Politics of Crime in America’s Golden State (University of California Press, 2004); Franklin Zimring, Gordon Hawkins, and Sam Kamin, Punishment and Democracy: Three Strikes and You’re Out in California (Oxford, 2001); and George Skelton, “A Father’s Crusade Born from Pain,” Los Angeles Times, December 9, 1993.
    Richard Wright and Scott Decker’s interviews of convicted armed robbers appear in Armed Robbers in Action: Stickups and Street Culture (Northeastern University Press, 1997). The comments cited are on page 120. Wright and Decker’s book is fascinating. Here’s a bit more from them on the psychology of criminality:
    Some of the armed robbers also tried not to think about getting caught because such thoughts generated an uncomfortably high level of mental anguish. They believed that the best way to prevent this from happening was to forget about the risk and leave matters to fate. One of them put it this way. “I don’t really trip off getting caught, man, ’cause you’ll just worry yourself like that.” Given that almost all of these offenders perceived themselves not only as being under pressure to obtain money quickly but also as having no lawful means of doing so, this makes sense. Where no viable alternative to crime exists, there clearly is little point in dwelling on the potentially negative consequences of offending. It should come as no surprise, then, to learn that the offenders usually preferred to ignore the possible risk and concentrate instead on the anticipated reward: “The way I think about [the