At every stage, their product is vulnerable. If somebody comes along and steals it, they can’t go to the police or the courts to get it back. So they can only defend their property one way: by violence. But you don’t want to be having a shoot-out every day—that’s no way to run a business. So you have to establish a reputation: a reputation for being terrifying. People must believe that you are so violent and brutal that they are too afraid to even try to pick a fight with you. You can only establish that reputation with attention-grabbing acts of brutality. The American sociologist Philippe
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