Territorial monopoly over protection is enforced by killing unauthorized would-be protectors

Evidence

Salvatore Buscemi was not a member of a mafia family, but he evidently aspired to a career as a protector. He was killed, according to Vincenzo Sinagra, “because he had taken the liberty of asking for protection money in the area of Villabate and Bagheria, without permission, and from persons who were already paying Marchese and Greco. Buscemi tried to justify this by claiming that he did not know who the area belonged to. The excuse was not very plausible because we were all familiar with the subdivisions of the Palermo area and knew which mafia organization they were subject to” (VS: I, 40-44). — Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia The Business of…, 324

Categorization

• XREF: Territorial rights over protection districts instantiates the discipline of trade cartels — entry control and exclusivity that Gambetta’s own model and Milgrom’s fair-entry screening both predict.
• ADDENDUM: Relevant to the ‘On Sacrifice’ piece horizon: the kill-as-sanction mechanism for entry violation parallels how informal enforcement outsiders is the core of private protection markets.