Money, mostly. I think. Thats why they had the gamecorner and everything, right?

Money and success.

Having the best uniforms of all the villain teams.

They did it.

>>26170154

What do criminal gangs in reality hope to accomplish?

>>26170154
Profit. That's literally it. They were in Mt. Moon to excavate for fossils to sell, they ran the Celadon Game Corner and stole a bunch of Pokemon for prizes, and they ambushed Silph Co. to steal Poke Balls and the Master Ball.

That's basically all they did in Gen 1 in terms of any actual goal, meanwhile in Gen 2 their only goal was to get Giovanni back while also doing a few things to make a profit like cutting off and selling Slowpoke tails...actually I think that's it, I don't think they had any other schemes to make a profit in Gen 2.

There is the idea that Giovanni had a goal of catching Mewtwo but you stopped him and he disbanded the team before he could do it. He was going to use the Silph Scope to catch a Gastly or Haunter to counter Mewtwo, and he was stealing the Master Ball since he knew it could catch any Pokemon without fail and planned to use it on Mewtwo. So since you beat him nothing ever came of it and that's the end of Team Rocket. They're actually quite bland when you think about what all they've done.

The pachinko (or gambling, which is illegal in japan), mt.moon operation and theft were all the same thing as the yakuza were doing 5 years of the release of pokemon red, blue and green.

They're just a metaphor for the same organized crime in Japan