>>323143I've been listening to Baby's First Game theory lectures which gives quite a neat answer.
The main strategy of the aristocracy is to consolidate power, by cheating the system, through collusion, that's difficult to detect, and enforcing discipline within their own ranks.
And I mean *specifically* the aristocracy, people with intergenerational wealth and institutional power who can make decisions that nobody else without the use of violence can overturn. Not the interchangeable faces used to keep the police cars on the road and the Colombians in the fields. Anyone in this position knows that resorting to violence invites instability, which is the only thing that is a proven credible threat to their positions.
Maintaining the criminality of $x in an extreme form, a transgressor from the in-group can be publicly punished and their agency removed - without any particular suspicion.
So say party A fucks up in a money laundering operation as part of said aristocracy and as a result, party B loses enough money to notice it. What course of redress do they have?
The courts? That runs the risk of some clerk gunning for promotion finding the link between A and B
Assassination? Immediately all sorts of attention is turned on the activities of the victim, same problem.
PR/MSM blasting? That may have worked once but not so much any more.
As such it's in the aristocracy's interest to maintain a form of punishment that is humiliating, life destroying, and completely erodes credibility. One that the majority of people without capital or connections finds distasteful so it's self reinforcing is ideal.
Hence.
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