A single-client protector cannot truly become a mafioso without diversified customers

Evidence

This limited route to autonomy is very different from that which depends on a number and variety of customers. In the former case the protector can rise swiftly owing to his increased blackmailing power. But in doing so he meets with a constraint: he can rise only as far as the position originally occupied by his employer. Provided the landowner cannot count on other protectors (such as the state), the mafioso can eventually usurp his place. But he then becomes less a mafioso than a self-made landowner or gabelloto. Only if the power and reputation he acquires in the process serve a wider purpose can his position evolve into that of a mafioso. — Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia The Business of…, 236

Categorization

• XREF: Core to the reader’s Gambetta/Schelling mapping: the autonomy of a protector depends on client diversification — a private protection market needs multiple customers, exactly the condition distinguishing a true protection ‘market’ from mere employment.
• SEED: Article angle: ‘Why a single patron is not a market’ — how customer diversification is the threshold that turns private enforcement from employment into an autonomous protection business, with the Liggio case as illustration.