After hearing that Phineas and Ferb is in production for a fifth season, I began binging old episodes so I could remember the storylines. This got me wondering about Dr. Doofenshmirtz, and how he continually builds new evil inventions only for Perry the Platypus to come ruin his ingenious plans. Let me assume, as all great Economists do, that each time Dr. Doofenshmirtz remembers Perry exists and will come to stop his plans (a reasonable assumption I assert given the fact he always builds a trap). Then why would Dr. Doofenshmirtz continue to build evil inventions, given his probability of success is near-zero (and is more likely to be struck by a dog)?
I thought about the following expression we learned in class when trying to rationalize voting:
pB + [D] - C > 0
While presented in the context of voting, I felt this concept can be used to analyze Dr. Doofenshmirtz's behavior. We can suppose that in each episode he "votes" to build his evil inventions, with p ranging from 0-1 according to how likely his invention will have an effect. Since Perry the Platypus constantly foils his plans, his p is near-zero which means he will not gain the Benefit "B" of his plan working. This means there must be some additional utility "D" which is greater than his economic costs "C" driving him to continuously vote to build an evil invention. Perhaps this utility comes from a sense of evil duty to be evil to his fellow Tri-State citizens, or perhaps he gains satisfaction from the scientific practice of building a machine. Maybe, the truth all this time, is that Dr. Doofenshmirtz loves Perry and votes to build these machines so that he can continue spending time with him.
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