Selling guarantees rather than information is the defining feature of mafia activity

Evidence

It may be objected that “Peppe” is simply an intermediary, common to many fields, times, and places, while the mafia is a circumscribed phenomenon. Intermediaries play a role in all sorts of business, from agriculture to marriage, from international arms traffic to the housing market, and there is nothing intrinsically mafioso about their activities. At the heart of this objection lies a conceptual confusion between two very different commodities: whether or not “Peppe” displays mafioso characteristics depends primarily on whether he produces and sells information or guarantees. As I show in the next chapter, if he sells guarantees, he is likely, under certain conditions, to develop mafioso tendencies, whereas if he limits himself to selling information without guaranteeing reliability, he will not. It is crust rather than information that matters. — Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia The Business of…, 42

Categorization

• XREF: This is the core distinction that maps onto the reader’s Milgrom/Gambetta framework — a guarantee-backed intermediary is precisely a private judge or enforcer, whereas a mere information broker stays within normal markets.
• DEFINE: Defines the mafioso’s distinctive commodity as guarantee (trust in reliability), not information.