CVS is defending against hundreds, maybe thousands of small time crime rackets.

But imagine you’re Black and Decker, and you want to hire thousands of thieves around the country to target tens of thousands of your customers (People who bought DeWalt, Stanley, etc).

How? Is there a budget line item for market development? And you convert maybe $20m into cash, and have reps in major metro areas? Do you fire low performers who don’t steal enough?

The whole thing collapses when you think about the logistics. No different from the “1000 people were paid off to falsely claim they saw an airplane hit the Pentagon, but nobody has come forward with receipts” nonsense.

Normal business is impossible to get right. These kinds of conspiracies are just fantasy.

> Is there a budget line item for market development?

Sure.

> And you convert maybe $20m into cash, and have reps in major metro areas?

You’ve seen examples in the thread. Flea markets, online marketplaces, injections into clean retail supply chains. (Amazon)

> Do you fire low performers who don’t steal enough?

Yes.

The existence of small time crooks doesn’t prove that organized crime is a myth. Getting stolen at scale commodities to market is not so different than managing global supply chains of cocaine and heroin. The street level people are independent contractors who make near minimum wage. The best example of business that skirt the line between legit and criminal enterprise are Chinatown busses… they provide cheap, unsafe travel and fuel the human trafficking pipeline of sexually exploited women as well as economically exploited restaurant and other employees.