Mafia protection is never fair or universal and ranges from genuine enforcement to extortion

Evidence

There are, of course, fortunate states of affairs in which agents are, as several of the people I interviewed in Sicily put it, “more honest than we are,” or in which the state can be trusted to enforce its own laws. But, as the local philosophy goes, here, where everyone is ready to take advantage of everyone else just to show he is a “wise guy,” the mafia puts things in order and keeps people in their place. The implications of such premises, however, are not so straightforward; nor is the role of the mafioso precisely that of benefactor. There are three ways, detailed in the following three sections, in which protection can fall short of being either fair or universal: the mafioso may sell genuine protection (1) only to some sellers (or buyers) at other sellers’ (or buyers’) expense; (2) only to sellers at the expense of buyers (or vice versa); (3) to neither, that is, he may practice extortion. — Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia The Business of…, 53

Categorization

• XREF: The three-part typology (partial protection, seller-only protection, extortion) parallels Gambetta’s own claim that private protection markets degrade based on the supplier’s discretion — connects to the reader’s framework of third-party arbitration failing when the arbiter is unaccountable.