The Mafia protects even low-output parking attendants but not taxi drivers

Evidence

Why, then, do Palermo’s drivers fail to cooperate? And why, furthermore, don’t local enforcers—that is, the mafia—help to impose cooperation? In a city where wholesale markets, funeral homes, purse snatchers, parking attendants, building contractors, florists, in short the whole spectrum of enterprise is protected, why is it that taxi drivers are not? Why are they not collectively protected against themselves and their own inclination to cheat? A plausible answer might be that there is very little profit to be made. But why, then, are unofficial parking attendants protected to make sure nobody invades their parking territories? Income from parking tips is by no means negligible: in 1986 each man received an estimated 30 million lire a year in Naples. Is the taxi business likely to be less profitable? — Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia The Business of…, 600

Categorization

• XREF: Narrows the Gambetta model: profitability alone cannot explain protection-market formation; the parked/immobile versus mobile distinction is the real driver.