Imagine the business opportunities

Everything except for harming capital, ok? Now go kill each other.

Huge companies would import stuff by the planeloads to avoid tariffs/duties
- Employees would be too busy hunting down CEOs to import stuff for the company.
- Apple was literally buying up entire passenger flights and filing them with iPhones instead of people to skirt in under the deadline. Capitalism is a hell of a drug.
Realistically, doesn't randomly killing people harm capital, in so much as it would mean they must have more staff to cover the work of an unknown number of murdered employees afterwards, lose money spent training anyone that gets killed, and have a slightly smaller workforce available that also is more proficient at violence?
- In theory yes, less employees means the value of labor goes up because of demand. This is what happened after the Black Death in Europe.
  In the wake of the drastic population decline brought on by the plague, wages shot up, and labourers could move to new localities in response to wage offers. Local and royal authorities in Western Europe instituted wage controls. The government controls sought to freeze wages at the old levels before the Black Death. Within England, for example, the Ordinance of Labourers, enacted in 1349, and the Statute of Labourers, enacted in 1351, restricted both wage increases and the relocation of workers.[30] If workers attempted to leave their current post, employers were given the right to have them imprisoned. The statute was poorly enforced in most areas, and farm wages in England on average doubled between 1350 and 1450,[31] but they were then static until the late 19th century.[32]
  Cohn, comparing numerous countries, argues that the laws were not designed primarily to freeze wages. Instead, he says that the energetic local and royal measures to control labour and artisans' prices were responses to elite fears of the greed and the possible new powers of the lesser classes that had gained new freedom. Cohn continues that the laws reflected the anxiety that followed the Black Death's new horrors of mass mortality and destruction and from elite anxiety about manifestations, such as the flagellant movement and the persecution of Jews, Catalans (in Sicily) and beggars.
  Of course nothing will stop the ruling class from fuckery.
Let's go, Luigi!

They don't have to pay taxes ever again if the angry mob of poor people get to them.
They don't need a purge night to commit tax fraud, the do it every day, for vast, vast sums of wealth.
If they had a purge night in real life, they would quickly amend it to just "murder" night. Lest the poors get an idea that they too could exploit the system.
Then they would amend it again because they don't want to get murdered. So it will be "Murdering approved people and groups night" but that also has a chance of backfiring if someone wealthy or the people protecting them could be at risk, so they will just change it to "The police get to murder you night" and then they will shrug and remove the nightly restriction, and then there you go... our current system.

Everything is legal, including:

falsifying a crime report or committing purjury
excessive force or police brutality
coerced confession
false arrest or imprisonment
evidence or witness tampering
unwarranted search and seizure or surveillance

Dropping nukes...
We're still talking about the purge, right?
- Um... yes...?
If everything is legal, and a police officer imprisions you that's ok right?! Nothing is ilegal. so we back.to running from the police
That sounds like an average Tuesday in Texas

Let's cover polygamy and tax fraud. If you marry multiple people during the purge ... does that mean the marriages are all legal?

If you claim a $1,000,000 tax refund and mail it while the purge is going ... is that legal?

Most people would have way more on their mind than just murder.

I would say that once the purge ends you cannot be legally married to multiple people. Meanwhile if you murder someone they're just dead. If you kidnap someone you'd have to let them go when it ends.
Stealing is an interesting gray area. Is possessing a stolen object the crime, or is the stealing the crime? Or possibly both? If possessing a stolen object is illegal then you'd have to return them when it ends.
- What if you shot someone during the purge, but they did not actually die until the next day.
  I'm thinking this whole "no laws" concept would actually need hundreds of thousands of laws. Courts would be tied up for years after each purge just trying to answer the legal questions regarding having no law.
- Skyrim would have me believe that possession of a stolen item is also a crime.
- It's not "stolen" because stealing is a crime but you took it on ~~free balloon~~ Purge Day. It's just something you have now.
Within 4 hours of announcing that a "purge night" was a thing, they would have to revise it to just call it "murder night" and even then, it will get further modified to "Murder of sanctioned people and groups night" and even THEN they will have to further amend it until it finally says "The police get to murder you night" and then they will want to remove the nightly restriction and then BAM you have what we have now.
- Just like that, you have moved any books written about the Purge from fiction to non-fiction.
the purge: April 15th
(for thise that are not american, this is when we have to file our taxes.)
(also, americans have to file their taxes manually... nothing is automated)
- Yep, and in the US, if you miss something on your taxes the government/IRS will delay the taxes and actually redo them and send you the new amount.

Time to erase all debt 👀

The first rule of Project Mayhem is you do not ask questions, sir.
- His name was Robert Paulson!
Hello, old friend.
F. Society

Stealing some real food, destroying anti-homeless architecture, sleeping in your own car, getting an abortion, same-sex marriage.

Anyway, I doubt most people would get violent. Most people aren't just held back by laws, but morality. People would probably just be trying all kinds of drugs mostly, racing, trespassing and breaking into places. What better time for exploring some abandoned buildings, or staff-only areas.
You'd probably find me in a train depot, probably taking pictures and trying to figure out how to get one of the engines running. If that area wasn't guarded of course.
Alternatively, I'd probably steal a bus. Or a semi truck. Just temporarily. I don't have a drivers license, but I want to try driving that.
Hmm, I might take a bicycle to the airport. I doubt people would risk flying, and it would probably be the emptiest area for cycling.

Anyway, I doubt most people would get violent. Most people aren’t just held back by laws, but morality
I'll be honest here, mate, I think we've seen that a very large portion of the population would be more than happy to get violent. It's mostly the ones who scream about laws needing to enforce morality on 'the heathens.'
- Most people aren't murders
I always assumed the Purges were set up by a far right government to legally kill anyone who tried to organise against them.
Send goon squads (not the new ones) to smash up and kill coops, local farms, unions, uncooperative lawyers, journalists, etc.
- You can do that without the purge.

"I'm gonna J-walk all over the place, and there's nothing you fuckers can do about it! ANARCHY!!"

Never saw that word spelled out in print, so I had to look it up: J-Walk :)

I’m gonna infringe on medical patents and pirate as much corpo medicine as I can in 12 hours

Like feeding the homeless in certain cities?

We want to watch poor people kill each other, not better their situation

What about the seizure and occupation of vacant private property?

During the purge union busting would be worse but man it goes both ways

Luckily, I think the way that I conduct my life leaves me with very low odds for being on anyone's kill list. I only have to worry about the murderous random killing.

Soon they'll come for the thousandaires. You shouldn't exist!
- Ooh look at mr hundredair over here, thinking he's better than the rest of us. You'll get what's coming to ya, pal.
  And don't think for one second that I'll be turning a blind eye to the rest of you positive balance freaks.

Pirates Software

Large Company To Police:

They pirated it after the purge ended. If you don't destroy their property, I'll make sure you get fired and your life forfeit!

that's a great way to be targeted next purge.
- I would bet that a great many heads of 'large companies' would be targeted in the first purge. There's no way that there isn't some disgruntled employee or even an ex-employee that wouldn't be willing to take a swing at the big guy before poverty comes in for the kill.

Possession of pirated material isn't illegal. It's the distribution that gets you. That's why torrenting needs a VPN but streaming is perfectly legal (for the viewer)

I always thought those movies were too simplistic.

Some people would think things through.

If the purge were real there would be a whole industry around purge-proofing homes. Also rental purge-proof shelters.
- That is a main storyline element in the first movie
Just wait until you find out about porn.

During the purge I’d hide in my bunker while downloading as much copyrighted material as possible onto a harddrive.

Yes, during the purge I would do this. But only in this hypothetical situation. During the purge. Hypothetically.
Isn't possession illegal though?
- No, just distribution.

If you steal a car during the purge do the transfer the title after

Relevant sketch

I only want to kill people who are more driven and successful than me.