Sabotage 101. Chowdhury and Gürtler-‘Sabotage is Ubiquitous.’ Business. Political. Economic. Career. Relationships. Media. War. Organizational. Resource Denial. AmeRegCorp-MHVille Lessons-FEA

“Pay more attention to what people do than what they say.” – Martin “Marty” Lavin, J.D. According to Springer Nature Link, about four centuries before the birth of Christ is an ancient example of the use of what is known today as “sabotage.” Wikipedia defines and describes sabotage as follows. “Sabotage is a deliberate action aimed at weakening a polity, government, effort, or organization through subversion, obstruction, demoralization, destabilization, division, disruption, or destruction. One who engages in sabotage is a saboteur. Saboteurs typically try to conceal their identities because of the consequences of their actions and to avoid invoking legal and organizational requirements for addressing sabotage.” Per Springer, ““Sabotage” is a deliberate and costly act of damaging a rival’s likelihood of winning the contest. Sabotage can be observed in, e.g., sports, war, promotion tournaments, and political or marketing campaigns.” Research by Subhasish M. Chowdhury & Oliver Gürtler made available via Springer asserts that “sabotage is ubiquitous.” Chances are good you have witnessed or know of acts of sabotage in relationships, business, career, academics, or virtually any other field of human activity, even if it wasn’t necessarily presented as sabotage because as Wikipedia stated: “Saboteurs typically try to conceal their identities because of the consequences of their actions and to avoid invoking legal and organizational” consequences from being deemed a saboteur. The research by Chowdhury and Gürtler on “Sabotage in Contests” predates the research by James “Jim” Schmitz Jr. and his colleagues regarding “sabotage monopoly” tactics impacting manufactured housing by several years. In a recent report about Principal Research Economist Jim Schmitz for the Minneapolis Federal Reserve: “To study monopoly, look to actions, not the textbook definition.” Jeff Horowitz wrote about his colleague’s research that: “Schmitz argues”…”Rather than focus on concentration and price-cost margins, Schmitz argues for a definition [of sabotage monopoly tactics] based on actions and behaviors.”

A pull quote from Part II, further below, which follows more details on Chowdhury’s and Gürtler’s research on sabotage.

MHProNews Key Takeaways: 

The Ubiquity of Sabotage: A 35,000-Foot View

Research by Subhasish Chowdhury and Oliver Gürtler establishes that sabotage is a “ubiquitous” and “deliberate act of damaging a rival’s likelihood of winning a contest”. This broader context validates the specific findings of James Schmitz Jr. and his colleagues.

 

Sabotage Type	Functional Mechanism	Organizational Context
Effort Manipulation	Increasing a rival’s cost of effort to decrease their effectiveness.	Evaluation systems based on relative, rather than absolute, performance.
Resource Denial	Denying a rival access to critical resources to ensure failure.	Aimed most often at the “ablest” contestant to remove them from competition.
Public Policy	Lessening the effectiveness of public policies through interference.	Sabotaging affirmative action or informational revelation in contests.

1. With that backdrop of “effort manipulation,” “resource denial” and “public policy,” briefly consider the following from Schmitz‘s research abstract.

Our forebears — including Adam Smith, Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, William Stanley Jevons, Frank A. Fetter, Lionel Robbins, Jacob Viner, Henry Simons and Thurman Arnold — understood there were many types of groups or organizations that develop into monopolies, including trade associations, cartels, unions, cooperatives and professional associations. They also emphasized that it’s difficult to know the full extent of monopolization, as many monopolies were informally organized, while others, perhaps the majority, were alliances of monopolies, making both types hard to detect. Our forebears also understood that monopolies took many types of harmful actions, such as destroying substitutes for their products and services, typically those purchased by low income families. They saw monopolies as the major cause of inequality. But after 1950, our profession simply ignored our forebears’ great knowledge. At this time, we adopted the definition of monopoly we have used for the last 75 years — “A monopoly is a firm that is a single seller with no close substitutes.” This obviously presents a very narrow view of the organizations that develop into monopolies and the type of harmful actions they take. Under such a view, Harberger (1954) found that the social costs of monopoly were trivial. Our profession’s interest in monopoly subsequently waned (see, e.g., Krugman (2015)). But our views about monopoly should not be driven by Harberger (1954), rather we should look to our great forebears. Moreover, a recent literature conducting research in the “spirit” of our forebears (reviewed in Schmitz (2020)) has essentially rediscovered our forebears’ findings but for our current period. Our profession should be studying monopoly much more extensively.

2. But rather than pivot into specific sabotage monopoly tactics as they appear in manufactured housing as detailed by Schmitz or others, which can be studied in a future facts-evidence-analysis (FEA) on MHProNews, this article is focused on a 35,000′-level introduction to the notion of sabotage as a “ubiquitous” tactic.  There are many reasons to do so, including, but not limited to, the notion that Schmitz et al are hardly alone in studying sabotage (in their case as it relates to a monopolization methodology) but is…“ubiquitous.” A nearly universal facet of behavior broadly found in society.

3. For a non-housing example. “The Simple Sabotage Field Manual is a document written by the Office of Strategic Services [OSS-the CIA precursor] in 1944. The manual was declassified by the Central Intelligence Agency [CIA] in 2008.” So, the OSS which morphed into what became the CIA was formally ‘teaching’ sabotage tactics at least 82 years ago.

4. Ancient concerns about sabotage are found from Chowdhury and Gürtler via Springer.

The king may be threatened by dangers in the interior or in the remote regions, particularly when he is about to start on an expedition. An internal rebellion is one led by a Crown Prince, the Purohita (the priest), the chief of defence or a minister…. An internal rebellion is more dangerous than one in the outer regions because it is like nurturing a viper in one’s bosom.

– Kautilya, Artha Shastra [Economic Science], c. 4th Century BC, p. 160

5. According to Chowdhury and Gürtler: “We discuss the theories and evidence emphasizing the means of sabotage, why sabotage occurs, and the effects of sabotage on individual contestants and on overall welfare…Sabotage is ubiquitous in everyday life.” (Bolded added). “In each of these cases, individuals [or groups] use strategies intended to damage someone else’s success rather than improving their own.”

They also said the following. The quotes are of Chowdhury and Gürtler writings, but the bullets and lettering are added by MHProNews.

• A) “Following a major part of the literature, we term the resources expended to increase one’s own probability of winning as “effort”, and those expended to reduce rivals’ probability of winning as “sabotage”.”
• B) “Businesspeople often resort to costly strategies to damage competitors’ business. Friedman (1998, p. 577) describes one such business malpractice that occurred in the 1890s.”
• C) “In many marketing campaigns, firms stress their rivals’ weak points.”
• D) “Sabotage is common also in political campaigns in which the opponents are discredited and often denigrated.”
• E) “Political imprisonment can be seen as an extreme form of such sabotage in political contests.”
• F) “Stealing crucial information from a political or commercial rival is also not uncommon.”
• G) ““Scorched earth” is a famous strategy in warfare and corporate takeover battles.”

6. Chowdhury and Gürtler distinguish between sabotage and punishment as follows.

“When an agent punishes someone else, this typically happens either because the person being punished is not following an objective norm or because the agent is motivated by fairness issues. Unlike sabotage, the punishment oftentimes is not executed in expectation of a material benefit for the punisher.”

7. Chowdhury and Gürtler stated this.

“Because sabotage is common, important, and different from other similar acts, research has continuously investigated the means and consequences of sabotage. However, there is no comprehensive survey of existing studies.”

From Part II #2.

[The…] broader “Sabotage 101” framing—business, political, media, organizational—undergirds [James] Schmitz [and his research colleagues] by implication: he’s not describing a weird conspiracy; he’s describing a textbook, theoretically expected pattern of sabotage in a high‑stakes contest.

8. This MHProNews MHVille facts-evidence-analysis (FEA) is underway.

 

 

Part I. A ‘35,000′ Level Overview of Sabotage Tactics‘ from Linked Sources as Shown.

 

Part II. Additional MHProNews MHVille Facts-Evidence-Analysis plus insights from Sources as Shown

In no particular order of importance.

1. In response to the pre-publication draft linked here, the input-inquiry (Q&A) thread with Google‘s artificial intelligence (AI) powered Gemini by MHProNews transparently provided at this link here and confirmed via screenshots for accuracy here. Note that additional linked sources are found at this link here which were provided by Gemini.

 

This analysis unpacking the “Sabotage 101” report applies the Facts-Evidence-Analysis (FEA) methodology to bridge the 35,000-foot view of universal sabotage with the specific “man-made” housing crisis.

The Ubiquity of Sabotage: A 35,000-Foot View

Research by Subhasish Chowdhury and Oliver Gürtler establishes that sabotage is a “ubiquitous” and “deliberate act of damaging a rival’s likelihood of winning a contest”. This broader context validates the specific findings of James Schmitz Jr. and his colleagues.

Sabotage Type	Functional Mechanism	Organizational Context
Effort Manipulation	Increasing a rival’s cost of effort to decrease their effectiveness.	Evaluation systems based on relative, rather than absolute, performance.
Resource Denial	Denying a rival access to critical resources to ensure failure.	Aimed most often at the “ablest” contestant to remove them from competition.
Public Policy	Lessening the effectiveness of public policies through interference.	Sabotaging affirmative action or informational revelation in contests.

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Unpacking the “United States of AmeRegCorp”

The report frames AmeRegCorp as the modern execution of these ancient tactics within a “corporate-regulatory-political complex”.

• The Neologism: AmeRegCorp refers to the symbiotic consolidation of American regulatory agencies and dominant corporate entities.

• The Dirty Secret: This structure favors established institutional players while suppressing independent competition through “man-made” legislative and financial bottlenecks.

• Sabotage as a Tool: In this environment, sabotage is not just a competitive act but a structural one—regulatory capture is used to create “policy bottlenecks” that prevent affordable housing from scaling.

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Connecting to Schmitz: Sabotage in MHVille

James Schmitz Jr.’s research fits as a precise subset of the Chowdhury/Gürtler model:

1. Monopolistic Sabotage: Schmitz argues that traditional on-site construction monopolies have invested heavily in sabotaging factory-built “small-modular” homes to protect their market share.

2. Regulatory Sabotage: He specifically points to HUD and the NAHB as monopolies that block attempts to adopt factory methods, creating a “double inefficiency” where the most cost-effective solution is rendered illegal or inaccessible.

3. Historical Proof: From 1960 to 1972, factory-built housing shipments rose from 10% to 60% of total production. The subsequent stagnation is evidence of successful, long-term sabotage.

Clarifications and Corrections

• Correction on “Monopoly”: Schmitz argues that modern economics defines monopoly incorrectly by focusing on price. He asserts we must look at actions and behaviors (sabotage) to identify true monopolies like “monopoly industries” that maneuver to prevent innovation.

• Intent vs. Accident: Per the FEA methodology, the “man-made” crisis is not a failure of system performance, but a success of the “AmeRegCorp” objective: consolidation and the protection of high-cost equity.

Would you like to drill down into the specific “Evaluation Systems” that might be encouraging this behavior within current trade associations?

— —

2. MS Bing‘s AI powered Copilot was provided a pre-publication draft of this article found at this link here. As part of a longer thread on these topics Copilot said the following linked here which it later confirmed as accurate as is indicated by the screen capture linked here.

Snapshot table – core thesis vs. evidence

1. Facts: What Chowdhury & Gurtler actually establish

Chowdhury and Gurtler’s “Sabotage in contests: a survey” (Public Choice, 2015) defines:

• Contest: situations where individuals expend resources to win valuable prizes.
• Sabotage: “a deliberate and costly act of damaging a rival’s likelihood of winning the contest.”

They document sabotage in:

• Sports
• War
• Promotion tournaments / careers
• Political campaigns
• Marketing campaigns

They show that:

• When rewards are rank‑based, agents can increase their chance of winning either by working harder or by reducing rivals’ effectiveness.
• Under standard assumptions (sabotage not too costly, imperfectly monitored), sabotage is predicted and observed repeatedly across many settings.

Your use of “ubiquitous” to summarize their conclusion—that sabotage is pervasive wherever contest‑like incentives and power asymmetries exist—is consistent with their survey. They don’t literally list every domain, but they clearly treat sabotage as a general, recurring feature of contests, not a rare anomaly.

Key reference: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11127-015-0264-9

2. Evidence: Extending sabotage beyond narrow contests

Your draft apparently applies their logic to:

• Business and careers – internal promotion tournaments, sales contests, corporate rivalries.
• Politics and regulation – lobbying, regulatory capture, “raising rivals’ costs.”
• Media and information – agenda‑setting, gatekeeping, disinformation to handicap opponents.
• War and conflict – classic military sabotage of infrastructure, logistics, morale.

This extension is well‑grounded:

• Tournament and organizational economics show sabotage in internal labor markets and firms.
• Political economy and industrial‑organization work on regulatory capture and raising rivals’ costs treat rule‑making as a strategic tool to handicap competitors.
• Media‑capture and agenda‑setting research documents information sabotage—selective coverage, framing, and suppression to favor incumbents.
• Military and security studies treat sabotage as a standard instrument of conflict.

So, framing sabotage as “ubiquitous in contests and organizations” and widely present across business, politics, media, and war is consistent with the broader literature, not an overreach.

3. Relevance to Schmitz’s “sabotage monopoly” in manufactured housing

James A. Schmitz Jr. and colleagues at the Minneapolis Fed explicitly use “sabotage” to describe how monopolies damage markets:

• In “How monopolies sabotage their markets,” they show monopolies raise costs, block innovation, and cripple rivals to preserve rents.
• In their work on factory‑built housing, they argue that site‑built interests and allied institutions sabotaged manufactured and modular housing via building codes, zoning, finance, and narratives—both harming consumers and creating new monopolies inside manufactured housing.

That fits your thesis almost perfectly:

• Chowdhury–Gurtler: where contests and rank‑based rewards exist, sabotage is a predictable, pervasive strategy.
• Schmitz: in the “contest” over control of the housing system, powerful incumbents have sabotaged factory‑built housing to protect their position.

Your broader “Sabotage 101” framing—business, political, media, organizational—undergirds Schmitz by implication: he’s not describing a weird conspiracy; he’s describing a textbook, theoretically expected pattern of sabotage in a high‑stakes contest.

4. AI/HI error check

Based on the available sources:

• Calling sabotage “ubiquitous” in contests and organizations is consistent with Chowdhury & Gurtler’s survey and examples.
• Extending that logic to business, politics, media, and war is conceptually sound and supported by adjacent literatures.
• The main care point—one you already handle in other pieces—is to keep legal proof distinct from economic/behavioral inference. Sabotage as a predicted and observed pattern ≠ courtroom proof of specific illegal acts.

Within that boundary, the thesis and its application to Schmitz’s manufactured‑housing work are factually and conceptually solid.

 

3. With that backdrop, these articles that include insights from economist Jim Schmitz and his colleagues and their sabotage monopoly thesis may be all the more of interest.

 

4. There is always more to know.

 

 

 

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