The Three Assumptions

You made three assumptions in answering the last question: (1) Your goal is to minimize the cost of crimes resulting from unauthorized access (where the costs consist of both the amount that ChoicePoint spends to stop the crime and the amount of loss that occurs after the expenditure.) (2) There is no way for those individuals to protect themselves from such crimes. (3) The only relevant effect of implementing the system will be to reduce the loss from crimes.

Change the first assumption: suppose that maximizing profit for ChoicePoint is your only goal, and assume the losses from crimes do not impose any loss on ChoicePoint, only on the victims of the crimes.

You would

(a) buy and implement the protection system as long as it costs less than $300,000.

(b) not buy and implement the protection system even if it costs less than $300,000.