Mafia enforcement makes distrust rational and blights mutual-benefit competition

Evidence

As Gambetta (1988, 172–73) notes, the Mafia might help someone sell fraudulently. This implicitly would make clear that without Mafia protection distrust of one’s fellows is rational and would therefore undercut competition that would benefit almost everyone. — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 972

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• QUESTION: A strong test for Hardin’s encoded-heuristics model: can rational distrust persist as an equilibrium even when the original occasion for it has vanished?

Related

• Mafia protection signals that distrusting others is rational (similarity 0.90)
• The mafia persists as a stable equilibrium that profits from distrust (similarity 0.87)
• Mafia protection suppresses the emergence of honest-dealing business norms. (similarity 0.84)
• Societies built on mutual distrust can stabilize into enduring structures. (similarity 0.84)
• Mafia protection makes distrust self-perpetuating and endogenous. (similarity 0.83)
• Mafia norms function as a self-perpetuating Nash equilibrium (similarity 0.83)
• The mafioso profits directly from maintained distrust in the market. (similarity 0.83)
• Selective initiation into the Mafia serves as an efficient behavioral guarantee (similarity 0.82)
• Mafia protection requires maintaining relations with the underworld it polices (similarity 0.81)
• The Mafia institutionalized distrust itself as a mechanism of control (similarity 0.81)
• A free market in quality can dissolve the demand for mafia protection (similarity 0.81)
• The mafia converts distrust into profit by enforcing resource monopolies (similarity 0.80)
• Private enforcement can perversely suppress self-policing among market participants. (similarity 0.80)
• Mafia culture sustains itself through pervasive mutual distrust, not solidarity (similarity 0.80)
• The mafioso profits from deliberately injecting distrust into markets (similarity 0.80)

Broader Connections

• Pervasive distrust is stable because solo cooperation invites exploitation #corroborates (0.88) — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 475
• State unreliability cascades into mutual distrust that blocks cooperation #expands (0.85) — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 492
• Self-fulfilling distrust becomes individually rational and resistant to disproof #corroborates (0.82) — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 2863
• Democracy’s need for consensus forces complicity with the mafia #expands (0.75) — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 2196
• The mafia persists in a turbulent equilibrium without monopoly or dissolution #expands (0.72) — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 2178