avoiding extortion 101 since I am a specialist at reasoning about things I don't actually know about, I have developed some thoughts on avoiding extortion (really)→[More:]

So I'm in the break room, overhearing service staff chatter. I don't know what they're talking about but snatches of the convo suggest it might be about recent labor strike violence. A metaphor one guy is extending upon is that you can't tie up an elephant and not feed it.

I find this an interesting phrase. So the point here is essentially that you shouldn't corral a powerful force without placating it as well. And I recall that I've heard 50 Cent say something similar: you feed the wolves or the wolves feed on you.

Which leads into the fact that the first epiphany I had about extortion concerned the hip hop world. I wondered why small-time rappers get extorted by random street thugs when major stars don't face this issue? Turns out it's cause some rappers have dealings with these random thugs and are beholden to an ethos of not "snitching." If Justin Timberlake gets pressured by a criminal he can just call the police. Someone who isn't snitching and/or has criminal associates can't do that. Another problem our rapper friends get into is that instead of hiring professional security (cause that seems 'soft') they just put criminals on payroll to accompany them, and again, that just gets you mired deeper into this web you can't get out of.

Cut scene; let's shine a lens on Bollywood. Big business in India (movies, real estate, agriculture, etc.--even educational institutions!) is infested with mafia. And again we notice it's not really gangsters coming out of the blue to pressure people—the underworld is intertwined in the nexus of cash, politics, power. As someone who might want to go into traditional large business in the future this concerns me a bit. So I'm reading this article about a gentleman named Arindam Chaudhuri and his doings and I come across this passage:

Arindam learnt quickly. Before long, he had developed a careful corporate approach to filmmaking that differed from the older Bollywood model of massive budgets, dubious financing (often from underworld sources) and a hit-or-miss approach to success. Arindam’s films, by contrast, focused on the bottom line, keeping the budget small and aiming not for huge audiences but for as much presence as possible in the multiplexes proliferating in the new India, places where a number of films ran simultaneously in theatres far smaller than their predecessors.

Lightbulb moment—of course! The reason the underworld terrorizes bollywood is that bollywood movies are financed by them. If you don't take money from them they might still be able to pressure you (just by virtue of being a player in the ecosystem) but at least there won't be a direct relationship.

What this means is that, Yes, there is a lot of criminal extortion activity that's just based on unexpected violence and ransom demands: kidnapping, blackmail, and so forth. However, there is a whole host of extortion activity that starts off with the victim trying to bring an unpredictable agent to their side, which later turns on them. It can be criminal, political or other kinds of power. Avoid dealing with such agents in the first place.

P.S. This is also somewhat related to all those fables about recruiting the Devil going wrong. So it's an archetypal problem in human affairs.