"Would you give money to a bully to keep him from beating you up every day?"

[conuly]

What the hell sort of question is that? Of course I'd pay up! I have money, pride, and my teeth, and of the three, I can least afford to lose the last. Wouldn't almost anybody submit to the shakedown? That's how protection rackets work, after all - everybody does the same math and comes to the same conclusion as I just did.

(Of course, the context was "I think this company was rude to me over the phone, therefore I decided to live without hot water and heating because I have my principles" so, you know, I guess we have different approaches to life?)

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Comments

[siliconshaman]

I'd pay, and secretly record it all and take that to the police. Extortion is a crime after all.

[redbird]

That is a weird context for the question about paying a bully. Without that, I'd say the question is figuring out when it makes sense to pay the bully off. Harvard seems to be doing at least as well after not paying Trump'x extortion, as some universities that did hand over large sums of money.

This isn't even "if you pay Danegeld, you will never be rid of the Dane." It's that a protection racket doesn't work if the crook takes the money and destroys the store anyway.