Mafia behavior is rational once considered as a protection-selling industry under competitive pressure

Evidence

The mafia (as I argue in Chapters 2 and 3) is an industry which, like many others, is managed consistently with its own peculiar requirements and constraints. In this sense too, therefore, it can be regarded as rational. Even the most outlandish behavior (as shown in Chapter 6) makes good economic sense. Facts that have received baroque interpretations can be simply explained as strategies which mafia families adopt in order to sell protection effectively. This does not imply that becoming a mafioso is a particularly rational thing to do; it means only that once in the trade, agents must run it efficiently or someone else will take their place. — Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia The Business of…, 32

Categorization

• XREF: Directly maps onto the reader’s core thesis: mafiosi as rational private protection vendors, competition discipline forcing efficiency — the same logic as Milgrom’s private judges and Gambetta’s protection market.
• DEFINE: Establishes the book’s central frame: treating the mafia as an industry (protection seller) rather than as a cultural pathology.