Mafia reputation cannot be separated from its owner’s body

Evidence

Although the roles of owner and manager cannot be separated, the same is not true of a mafioso and his reputation. In principle, the mafioso would benefit from such a separation. If name alone were sufficient to command loyalty and fair play, ownership would be flexible—that is, easier to transfer and bequeath—and the field of operations much broader than that sustained by direct personal contacts. True, there would also be drawbacks, for when reputation is divorced from particular individuals, it becomes that much easier for impostors to pass themselves off as agents of “Don Peppe, Inc.” Still, the fact that this distinction rarely occurs in practice is not structural but simply contingent on the fact that the law makes it difficult to advertise protection services by generalized and impersonal means, which in turn makes it even more difficult for mafia firms to expand beyond limited circles. — Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia The Business of…, 167

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: This pinpoints why the mafia can’t become a depersonalized corporation: state illegality blocks impersonal advertising, so reputation stays welded to persons — which is exactly why old mafiosi must be killed rather than retired (loc 165). The logic connecting the body, the brand, and the kill is dense.
• XREF: Parallels the old-priest’s-/old-man’s-story from loc 165 and echoes Milgrom’s point that when institutional reputation mechanisms are unavailable, personal reputation substitutes but cannot scale.