Dont put me on the same line with this guy cause I mentioned I have seen examples. You can find my blog by googling my name and find posts proving bad techniques that rank on page one (with screenshots etc) for more than a month, its not that hard. Also I did not say that I CAN SHOW YOU THOUSANDS of examples of successful business rankings. I said in pure copy paste " But that does not cancel million cases where there is simply not a reason for someone to rank". I also say And yes I know google will ban them/penalise them one day, someday, so again your "long-haul" claim (which you claim, i didnt) does not put me to a different direction to what I truly believe or what most people say in this post. Thanks
In regards to branding, ofcourse black hat will never work. To me black hat is a popular practised to micro niche small web sites that makes revenue from adsense and amazon for keywords that are low competitive and the owner is lucky enough to own an EMD or do good SEO because he actually cares. But even in this case in the long-haul as you say I am pretty sure they will be beaten.
Hope you find these clarifications useful.