This is "Eliminating" the Competition

The most recent post talked about how the Pittsburgh MLS has been trying to eliminate low cost competition. Eliminating the competition, however, isn't limited to traditional businesses. And, the recent economic slowdown is increasing rivalry in all types of "businesses."

Veteran observers of Japanese organised crime are predicting a sharp increase in violence in the coming weeks as two rival yakuza crime syndicates threaten to battle it out for supremacy of the protection, prostitution and drugs rackets in the centre of the city.

The stakes are rising fast. With many of their business interests such as property and construction battered by the country’s deepening recession, the gangs are scrambling more aggressively for the profits from rackets such as blackmail and loan-sharking, which thrive in the more glamorous districts of Tokyo, according to one authority on the yakuza.