Rational Choice Theory: Water White

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This paper will explain Rational Choice Theory and its different components. The paper will also discuss how it pertains to the main character of “Breaking Bad” also known as Water White. This paper is going to focus on how Walter weighed cost and benefits in order to maintain a drug empire. The paper will relate Rational Choice Theory to Walters Actions. Breaking Bad and Walter White applications to Rational Choice Theory. Rational choice theory relies heavily on the classical criminal school established by Cesare Beccaria (Cornish, Clarke, 1986). If focuses on the rationality of an individual seeking to fulfil pleasure without weighing the pain. Walter experiences pain, both physical and some psychological pain which lead him on to criminal…show more content…
The theory says that individuals have to weigh the cost and benefits before engaging into criminal activity. Walter is a lost memory to his close friends who are C.E.Os of a multibillion company that he helped to co-found. His old friends and business partners Elliott and Gretchen Schwartz, offer to pay for Walters’s chemotherapy and medical expenses but he declines. Walter take action in his own hands and decides to apply his chemistry expertise which is to produce and distribute methamphetamine. Walter realizes the benefits of criminality after his first major drug deal which gained him a sense for excitement. Walter starts to weight out the cost and benefits thinking he can outsmart the authorities and avoid prison. Either way he doesn’t have much time to live so, any money that can be left to his family surely outweighs any pain prison would cost. As time went on Walter becomes an underground Methamphetamine drug kingpin still outweighing the cost of apprehension by authorizes, Walter still believes his actions are truly going to have a benefit to him and his…show more content…
One possible way that criminal activity would have been avoided if Walter could have avoided engaging in criminal activity to satisfy his financial need by accepting his friend’s offer to pay for his medical treatments wasn’t a proud stubborn person and would take his old collages offer to pay for his treatment. Another example one would be if Walter was better financially stable , a better grip on his family finances would have given him a better chance to afford all the financial obstacles that where given to him, in this case Walter would have been able to afford the cancer treatment and his new born daughter. Policy implications that would have helped would been financial ones that would have been able to help him with the funding of the chemotherapy in a legitimate way instead of forming a drug empire that relies on illegitimate manners of gaining monetary success. Such as the cancer centers that are broadcasted on television that help people with no money afford the care that they
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