I was having a discussion after watching Michael Clayton. I applaud the author in his initiative to explore the edges of reality but there’s several reasons why there is not a big market for corporate assassins. Since we’re on a topic like this I’m going to cut away the moral soppy bullshit but rather the actual reality. Do keep in mind though a lot of people think they are ruthless (and hate themselves for it), they’re actually just nice people doing what is necessary. They’re the same idiots who read Art of War and think one book makes them understand an entire discipline dealing with the most serious investment, life or death. They don’t understand any of what they think they do. In comparision, I’m the nicest guy but if someone steps in my way I will devour them with such intensity it will extinguish any hope they will even make it to the afterlife. Good thing then that everyone around me only benefits from my success. =D

A) MURDER IS A VERY PUNISHABLE CRIME: Businessmen being intelligent people have understood that while crime is profitable it is not sustainable and creates way too much stress and paranoia than it’s worth. Only sociopaths operate in that industry without ‘emotional burden’ as I could put it. So the cunts who are shitty at business and need to play dirty will try and bend rules but this is all in the legal realm. Because it’s all malleable and it can be argued one way or another, their defense is in the shitloads of lawyers who are only in the occupation for money. A direct attempt to end someone’s life is indefensible and due to the perception of his occupation, even if he survives jail he won’t survive socially.

B) GIANTS COMPETE, NOT PEOPLE: Murdering one person won’t really do that much to a business’s bottom line. CEOs are hired and fired all the time. I assume we’re talking about huge corporations here as they appear to have the most ‘motive’. They have an immense infrastructure to support and sustain themselves, one person’s would not impact that much, not even CEO. The essential function of people high up on the corporate ladder is to make decisions. A lot of people can make decisions. An exception would be if the CEO is the backbone and lifeblood of the company (public perception doesn’t matter. So people like Steve Jobs or Bill Gates, just like George Bush, they’re heavily influenced by their Administration)

D) Basically, like anything else, the reason why people don’t do it is because they understand the risk is not worth the return on investment. Using actual violence in business rather than legal or political channels of violence is naive and inefficient. The shittier you are at something, the more you have to cheat if you want to win.

So, the satisfaction in running a business is in winning but as we all know there is little glory in winning when one cheats. I have to think that most business leaders will have realized this by the time they are running billion dollar companies. That said, I think that most individuals are willing to bend rules if they feel that the competition is already doing so. I think this is a slightly different psychology than the “everybody is doing it” justification that we hear about so often. I think it’s more of a rationalization. “I have to break the rules otherwise _insert rationalization_”.

> “Why do almost all white people refrain from checking “black” on college admissions applications?”

I don’t know, but here in the UK, a reasonable number of (white) criminals describe themselves as “black.”

This is because arresting officers have an obligation to allow the person arrested to make their own determination of ethnic origin on the arrest report.

I’m told (anecdotally, by contacts in the police, rather than with statistical rigor) that repeat criminals have learnt that describing themselves as “black” serves to confuse subsequent juries about the police witness statements, as in “Officer, you described my client as a Black man, about 25″ – how can this possibly be the man we now see before us?”

There may be a reporting bias as well – are Western media more interested in political murders in far away places than business murders in far away places?

2. There is a military strategy that says it’s better to wound the other guy than kill him. Wounded soldiers require many more of the enemy’s resources than a dead soldier. So it’s better to force a competitor to “leave for personal reasons” than kill him outright: golden parachutes, etc. make a larger impact on your competitor than just forcing them to promote the successor.

3. Do unto others… killing your competitor would require a huge investment in personal security for yourself. (See #1.)

4. With sufficient resources, murder can be made to look like natural causes. So it happens more often than we know.