Post-Soviet racketeer networks controlled market quality information

Evidence

Only if you are lucky enough to have a high-placed friend among the racketeers who control the market can you check [the quality of food]. And then you find our that the caviar is counterfeit; even the trademark printed on the tin has been hand-painted. You discover that the bottles of vodka are all samoldelnye, home-distilled by ad hoc producers, and that is why they cost 90 rubies instead of 120. And you even find out that “foreign” liquor, in the majority of cases, is only in a foreign bottle. (Repubblica, April 19, 1992) In the Soviet republics, unlike in other former socialist countries, a plethora of candidates-from disbanded Red Army soldiers to unemployed athletes-is clamoring to man the protection market. — Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia The Business of…, 670

Categorization

• XREF: Quality-verification gatekeeping by private enforcers connects directly to Gambetta’s Sicily analysis and to the reader’s Milgrom private-judge framework — racketeers controlling info about goods is a protection-trust function.
• CANDY: Hand-painted fake caviar trademarks and home-distilled vodka bottled as ‘foreign’ liquor is a striking, funny, self-contained detail.