Violent abuse and competitive protection are often indistinguishable in practice

Evidence

When such brutal violations of basic rights are perpetrated by mafiosi for purely personal gain, they cannot be classified as other than violent abuses. But when an entire group benefits, such abuses may begin to resemble protection against competition, for the simple reason that the two are often the same. Whether one sees them as abuse or protection depends on which side one is on. — Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia The Business of…, 493

Categorization

• XREF: This is the core analytic ambiguity the reader is mining: the Mafia’s coercion looks like abuse to insiders and protection to beneficiaries — matches Gambetta’s private-protection thesis and Milgrom’s private judges. — connects to: In abuse structures the abused and abuser are interchangeable positions. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 544