Businessmen abhorred competitors, where having competition was equivalent to earning less profit. Whether it was about getting more customers by increasing the buying price or funding ambitious pirates to help them with their quest for the throne, it was undeniable that these things were going to cost them a large sum of money. According to Frazer, they had thought about setting up a business alliance, but they could not solve the problem of sharing its profits. Without getting a unanimous decision on the profit-sharing proposal, the plan of setting up a business alliance was deemed to fail.
For those unhappy with the proposal, they did what they would usually do. As usual, they increased their buying prices to attract more potential customers in the hopes that they'd deal with them instead. Soon, other black market merchants that stuck to the rules could stand it no more after seeing their business partners leaving them for unethical black market merchants instead.
