The mafia evolved from private protection in trust-scarce markets.

Evidence

Am I suggesting that, in essence, “Peppe” and his colleagues are mafiosi? The answer is, broadly, yes. My claim is that the main market for mafia services is to be found in unstable transactions in which crust is scarce and fragile. Such is the case, for instance, with illegal transactions in which no legitimate enforcement agency—in other words, the state—is available. There are many variants on the model. “Peppe” may be a single person or a network of more or less organized agents. He may supervise every transaction in a given marker, or he may be asked ex post facto to resolve a transaction in which cooperation and agreement have failed. He may protect either buyers or sellers or both at the same time. … Yet, although “Peppe” may appear under many guises, it is nevertheless a peculiar evolution of his activity which is at the origin of the mafia. — Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia The Business of…, 41

Categorization

• XREF: Central thesis of the reader’s project: maps onto Gambetta’s own model and the private-enforcement economics (Milgrom, Schelling credible commitments) the reader is testing against novel scenes.
• QUESTION: The claim that state absence is a sufficient explanation for mafia demand is worth probing — what about legal markets with fragile trust? Gambetta seems to concede instability as the deeper condition.
• SEED: Article angle: the ‘Peppe’ as a universal figure across black markets — the trusted middleman who sells the very trust the state cannot certify, from Sicilian cattle to crypto exchanges.