Financial exposure made mafiosi internalize smugglers to secure their credibility

Evidence

The financial exposure of the mafia has crucial consequences, for it is no longer just money which is at stake but the credibility of the guarantor as well. This exposure generates a formidable incentive to ensure that the business runs smoothly in all its phases. When this functioning proved straightforward, mafiosi and smugglers remained separate; but when it became problematic, mafiosi responded by internalizing key smugglers. … In this way the mafiosi hoped to bind smugglers more closely and prevent defection and cheating. — Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia The Business of…, 621

Categorization

• XREF: Directly supports the reader’s commitment-mechanism thesis: initiation-into-the-family operates as a Schellingian bonding device that raises the cost of defection, exactly as hostage mechanics do.
• DEEPTHINKING: The move from ‘arms-length protection fee’ to ‘blood-family membership as forfeitable bond’ is a sharp escalation ladder in commitment technology — worth sitting with as a general theory of when a third-party enforcer converts clients into kin.