How to Deal with Hooligans

Consider the old Yiddish story about the shopkeeper who arrived at his shop only to find abusive and derogatory graffiti spray-painted all over his store window. He cleaned the window, but the same thing happened again the next day. So he hatched a plan:

On the third day, he waited until the local ruffians showed up and did their dirty work and then paid them $10 to thank them for their effort. The next day, he thanked them again but only paid them $5. He continued to pay them to deface his property but the amount kept decreasing so that soon they were only getting $1. They stopped coming. Why bother doing all that work to abuse the shopkeeper for so little money?