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There is really very little difference between the mafia and legitimate governance. Smaller organizations lack the propaganda reach and expertise to sanitize t

There is really very little difference between the mafia and legitimate governance. Smaller organizations lack the propaganda reach and expertise to sanitize their actions and so they are classified as criminals. Larger ones have hordes of academics, journalists, philosophers, etc., proclaiming the moral righteousness of their use of lethal force and intimidation (see the "Bush Doctrine"). There is no such thing as politics without force, and force requires intimidation, killing, extortion, etc. Just like the shopkeeper who grudgingly but willingly pays the mafia for "protection", we pay taxes on threat of jail time for "infrastructure" and "education", etc. For all but the elite, education is just daycare and training for serfdom. It's amazing how humans love the strong leader (Trump is capitalizing on this) and how we love to take sides against and enemy or other (sports, etc.) These are animal tendencies that we still embrace and that still have tremendous impact on us in spite of our large primate brains. In the third world, politicians travel around with a few dozen soldiers carrying machine guns. Our leaders travel in a motorcade with limousines, to hide the raw projection of power from public view. But to an adversary it's a formidable show of force.

jamespo 11y ago
Why is infrastructure in quotes? Are roads, healthcare, police, fire service, etc imaginary?
- grandalf 11y ago
  A very tiny percentage taxes actually pays for things that qualify as infrastructure. The rest pays for things that are far less transparent and far more corrupt(able), not to mention blatant wealth transfers to influential interest groups.
  - furytrader 11y ago
    By influential interest groups, do you mean Social Security, Welfare, Medicare and Medicaid? Because that's roughly 60% of Federal spending.
    - kevin_thibedeau 11y ago
      Much of which is spent on the over-inflated cost structure of healthcare providers gaming the system.
- omouse 11y ago
  Considering that most roads and bridges are falling apart and that healthcare is woefully underfunded in some areas and the police are overfunded and have enough $$$ for military-grade gear, there's a good reason to put infrastructure in quotes...
  - rqebmm 11y ago
    The police aren't spending money on military-grade gear, they're being gifted surplus from the military. It's a minor distinction, but it's the difference between "we spend too much on the defense industry" and "we are allocating local budgets to militarizing the police".
    - dragonwriter 11y ago
      > The police aren't spending money on military-grade gear, they're being gifted surplus from the military. They're spending money training on it, storing it, operating it, and organizing operations around it so that they can justify receiving and keeping it, as well as in personnel costs associated with the staff time devoted to doing the research, applications, etc., to be awarded it. They may not be purchasing it, but its not appearing and hanging around without expenditure of department resources.
  - superuser2 11y ago
    Infrastructure is falling apart because people like the grandparent commenter succesfully reduce its funding. The conservative strategy works shockingly well: defund government, appoint administrators who are actvely opposed to the existence of the programs they run, then sit back and claim that government can't do anything right.
    - grandalf 11y ago
      > people like the grandparent commenter Not sure whose comment you are referring to. My comment was intended to illustrate some properties institutions built by primates with guns. Obviously, governments (and criminal organizations) provide some valuable services to society (employment, structure, resource allocation, etc.) The current status quo society and government provides lots of opportunity to some, and virtually no opportunity to others. "Criminality" provides a different distribution of opportunity. Drawing a firm distinction between legitimate and criminal pursuits is a profoundly conservative worldview.
Lawtonfogle 11y ago
>It's amazing how humans love the strong leader (Trump is capitalizing on this) and how we love to take sides against and enemy or other (sports, etc.) Growing up in a strong religious culture (though not a cult) that I later became disillusioned with, it almost hurt noticing the same trends in so many other areas of life that one would think immune from it. From sports to academics to social movements. There is something inside of humans that has for centuries made religion very popular. Even now that many have been able to leave religion behind, what ever that is deep inside of use still exists and it is influencing the new social groups we form, creating systems of beliefs and rituals.
- humanrebar 11y ago
  ...it seems fair give a theist take on an agnostic or atheist thought. People expect leaders that are: * strong * fair * capable * intelligent * loyal * available * caring * personal * decisive * on top of things * courageous People who believe in God see that as a list only God himself could check off. That means we have an innate desire for a leader with the qualities of God himself. To the extent that people try to find perfect leadership in imperfect men and ideas, they will be disappointed. Pick literally any names: Bush, Obama, Trump, Jobs, Gates, Musk -- even Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Dr. King and Thomas Jefferson. So we become disappointed and move on to other people and concepts. Or we find God as He is, not just as we would imagine Him, and find peace in belonging to Him. In a more personal take, I tend to be hard on my bosses and organizations; at times I have to remind myself to have reasonable expectations for human leaders.
  - Retra 11y ago
    So where'd you find him, and why haven't you elected him president? You said he was available, right? (Or maybe you forget "real" in you list of leadership qualities?)
    - humanrebar 11y ago
      What makes you think He isn't real?
peterwwillis 11y ago
This is like saying there's little difference between McDonalds and legitimate governance. They're a business. There are parallels between the mafia and government but it's still apples and oranges. Governance in modern societies is implemented by a party which holds power over the state. The mafia have a business model which is similar, but largely limits itself to a few select types of business strategies and markets, much like many other businesses. Their use of a threat of force is unique in terms of business models, sure, but the mafia has nothing to do with governance in general.
- grandalf 11y ago
  Organized crime groups are regional, and by necessity they are somewhat parasitic, i.e., relegated to black and gray market economic activities. The key similarities are use of force and intimidation, taxation, hierarchy, and propaganda. Once a criminal organization gets powerful enough, it becomes able to whitewash its own image and branch into legitimate/legal economic pursuits. Also, with sufficient growth and power, the very laws themselves can be bent to legitimize past and current actions. Criminal organizations also utilize principles of decentralization as a scaling strategy. There are elaborate transfer of power rituals, some resembling democratic processes and others not. The goal of any criminal organization is to become larger and more powerful, but there are extra spoils due to premium prices for black market endeavors. Criminal organizations seize opportunities where laws exist but are poorly enforced... or in other words, where there is no de facto prohibition against black/gray market activity (such as the tens of thousands of asian massage brothels in the US). With additional revenue comes better propaganda and the freedom to clean up the organization's image. There is also a turning point when the group benefits more from harnessing moral indignation against certain behavior, and the wise populist criminal group will not let this go to waste.
  - peterwwillis 11y ago
    What you're talking about is basically just the means by which a status quo is maintained... again, yes, there's parallels, but the point of the government is to support all the people and their ability to continue to live and prosper. The point of the mafia is to make money/power for a small percentage of people and keep their market position. China will make sure you go to school. China will make sure you have rice to eat. The mafia will make sure they get a piece of your rice and the school's lunch money. They're a selfish organization concerned with profit and not social issues, whereas the government's position is that the people matter. If you want to compare government and organized crime, the Yakuza are probably the closest to a formal government. For example, they have some legitimate business interests and different tactics for gaining influence in multiple markets, they're more transparent than the mafia, and they're often altruistic.
nqzero 11y ago
i was hoping that the article was going to discuss the issues that you're very nicely outlined
PJDK 11y ago
- Smaller organizations lack the propaganda reach and expertise to sanitize their actions and so they are classified as criminals. Larger ones have hordes of academics, journalists, philosophers, etc., proclaiming the moral righteousness of their use of lethal force and intimidation (see the "Bush Doctrine"). This is very much missing the point of there being any state at all. The notion of a single group having the monopoly on violence in a society is very important for that society to be able to function. To say it's the same because both government and mafia use force to get people to pay money is missing the point completely. Having only one source of violent coercion is vital for a society to function properly (see Syria for examples of what happens when you have many sources). If you can have democratic constraints on how that violence get's used, then all the better. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leviathan_(book) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leviathan_(book)
- grandalf 11y ago
  > a single group having the monopoly on violence There is some truth to this from a top-down, social organization perspective. But governments don't just have a monopoly on violence, they actively use propaganda to hide the use of violence from the public, through an ongoing process of whitewashing and image management that is incompatible with democracy. Violence is ugly. If our government does it, it ought to own up to every gory detail so that the public can honestly assess its appetite for more.
  - rqebmm 11y ago
    Except part of the point of a democratic society is to leave the hard decisions of state to a small group of people who are ideally best equipped to handle it. The intent is precisely for the public at large to NOT have to assess every minute, gory detail, as then they would have no time left to contribute to the society. Now, that model also relies on the ability to trust that those chosen to make the hard decisions are doing so competently and in the best interests of the society at large. It also bakes in the assumption that everyone will have to make compromises. In the immortal words of Calvin and Hobbes "A good compromise leaves everyone mad".
lucio 11y ago
There is an important difference between the mafia and legitimate governance: A Constitution and a Republic (3 powers).
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- hassiktir 11y ago
  a constitutional monarchy is almost a direct parallel to many organized crime syndicates. is that not legitimate governance?
  - lucio 11y ago
    King's bloodline rules because god say so... You're not a free man, you're a subject. Do you see that as "legitimate"?
fandb 11y ago
>> Larger ones have hordes of academics, journalists, philosophers, etc., proclaiming the moral righteousness of their use of lethal force and intimidation (see the "Bush Doctrine"). It plays well for the Democrats too: http://www.cnn.com/US/9812/16/clinton.iraq.speech/ http://www.cnn.com/US/9812/16/clinton.iraq.speech/ ""Their mission is to attack Iraq's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs and its military capacity to threaten its neighbors," said Clinton."
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
- aianus 11y ago
  And some class A ad hominems and strawmen are any better?
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
    - aianus 11y ago
      Perhaps in some parts of the world all business is conducted with violence. But in the West violence and the threat thereof is what puts gangsters and government in a separate class by themselves.
pekk 11y ago
> There is really very little difference between the mafia and legitimate governance. The name of that little difference is legitimacy.
- agorabinary 11y ago
  legitimate 1. according to law, lawful So the difference between the mafia and government is the use of laws? Which are rules that governments abide by? Sounds very circular indeed.

jamespo 11y ago

Why is infrastructure in quotes? Are roads, healthcare, police, fire service, etc imaginary?

grandalf 11y ago
A very tiny percentage taxes actually pays for things that qualify as infrastructure. The rest pays for things that are far less transparent and far more corrupt(able), not to mention blatant wealth transfers to influential interest groups.
- furytrader 11y ago
  By influential interest groups, do you mean Social Security, Welfare, Medicare and Medicaid? Because that's roughly 60% of Federal spending.
  - kevin_thibedeau 11y ago
    Much of which is spent on the over-inflated cost structure of healthcare providers gaming the system.
omouse 11y ago
Considering that most roads and bridges are falling apart and that healthcare is woefully underfunded in some areas and the police are overfunded and have enough $$$ for military-grade gear, there's a good reason to put infrastructure in quotes...
- rqebmm 11y ago
  The police aren't spending money on military-grade gear, they're being gifted surplus from the military. It's a minor distinction, but it's the difference between "we spend too much on the defense industry" and "we are allocating local budgets to militarizing the police".
  - dragonwriter 11y ago
    > The police aren't spending money on military-grade gear, they're being gifted surplus from the military. They're spending money training on it, storing it, operating it, and organizing operations around it so that they can justify receiving and keeping it, as well as in personnel costs associated with the staff time devoted to doing the research, applications, etc., to be awarded it. They may not be purchasing it, but its not appearing and hanging around without expenditure of department resources.
- superuser2 11y ago
  Infrastructure is falling apart because people like the grandparent commenter succesfully reduce its funding. The conservative strategy works shockingly well: defund government, appoint administrators who are actvely opposed to the existence of the programs they run, then sit back and claim that government can't do anything right.
  - grandalf 11y ago
    > people like the grandparent commenter Not sure whose comment you are referring to. My comment was intended to illustrate some properties institutions built by primates with guns. Obviously, governments (and criminal organizations) provide some valuable services to society (employment, structure, resource allocation, etc.) The current status quo society and government provides lots of opportunity to some, and virtually no opportunity to others. "Criminality" provides a different distribution of opportunity. Drawing a firm distinction between legitimate and criminal pursuits is a profoundly conservative worldview.

Lawtonfogle 11y ago

>It's amazing how humans love the strong leader (Trump is capitalizing on this) and how we love to take sides against and enemy or other (sports, etc.) Growing up in a strong religious culture (though not a cult) that I later became disillusioned with, it almost hurt noticing the same trends in so many other areas of life that one would think immune from it. From sports to academics to social movements. There is something inside of humans that has for centuries made religion very popular. Even now that many have been able to leave religion behind, what ever that is deep inside of use still exists and it is influencing the new social groups we form, creating systems of beliefs and rituals.

humanrebar 11y ago
...it seems fair give a theist take on an agnostic or atheist thought. People expect leaders that are: * strong * fair * capable * intelligent * loyal * available * caring * personal * decisive * on top of things * courageous People who believe in God see that as a list only God himself could check off. That means we have an innate desire for a leader with the qualities of God himself. To the extent that people try to find perfect leadership in imperfect men and ideas, they will be disappointed. Pick literally any names: Bush, Obama, Trump, Jobs, Gates, Musk -- even Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Dr. King and Thomas Jefferson. So we become disappointed and move on to other people and concepts. Or we find God as He is, not just as we would imagine Him, and find peace in belonging to Him. In a more personal take, I tend to be hard on my bosses and organizations; at times I have to remind myself to have reasonable expectations for human leaders.
- Retra 11y ago
  So where'd you find him, and why haven't you elected him president? You said he was available, right? (Or maybe you forget "real" in you list of leadership qualities?)
  - humanrebar 11y ago
    What makes you think He isn't real?

peterwwillis 11y ago

This is like saying there's little difference between McDonalds and legitimate governance. They're a business. There are parallels between the mafia and government but it's still apples and oranges. Governance in modern societies is implemented by a party which holds power over the state. The mafia have a business model which is similar, but largely limits itself to a few select types of business strategies and markets, much like many other businesses. Their use of a threat of force is unique in terms of business models, sure, but the mafia has nothing to do with governance in general.

grandalf 11y ago
Organized crime groups are regional, and by necessity they are somewhat parasitic, i.e., relegated to black and gray market economic activities. The key similarities are use of force and intimidation, taxation, hierarchy, and propaganda. Once a criminal organization gets powerful enough, it becomes able to whitewash its own image and branch into legitimate/legal economic pursuits. Also, with sufficient growth and power, the very laws themselves can be bent to legitimize past and current actions. Criminal organizations also utilize principles of decentralization as a scaling strategy. There are elaborate transfer of power rituals, some resembling democratic processes and others not. The goal of any criminal organization is to become larger and more powerful, but there are extra spoils due to premium prices for black market endeavors. Criminal organizations seize opportunities where laws exist but are poorly enforced... or in other words, where there is no de facto prohibition against black/gray market activity (such as the tens of thousands of asian massage brothels in the US). With additional revenue comes better propaganda and the freedom to clean up the organization's image. There is also a turning point when the group benefits more from harnessing moral indignation against certain behavior, and the wise populist criminal group will not let this go to waste.
- peterwwillis 11y ago
  What you're talking about is basically just the means by which a status quo is maintained... again, yes, there's parallels, but the point of the government is to support all the people and their ability to continue to live and prosper. The point of the mafia is to make money/power for a small percentage of people and keep their market position. China will make sure you go to school. China will make sure you have rice to eat. The mafia will make sure they get a piece of your rice and the school's lunch money. They're a selfish organization concerned with profit and not social issues, whereas the government's position is that the people matter. If you want to compare government and organized crime, the Yakuza are probably the closest to a formal government. For example, they have some legitimate business interests and different tactics for gaining influence in multiple markets, they're more transparent than the mafia, and they're often altruistic.

nqzero 11y ago

i was hoping that the article was going to discuss the issues that you're very nicely outlined

PJDK 11y ago

- Smaller organizations lack the propaganda reach and expertise to sanitize their actions and so they are classified as criminals. Larger ones have hordes of academics, journalists, philosophers, etc., proclaiming the moral righteousness of their use of lethal force and intimidation (see the "Bush Doctrine"). This is very much missing the point of there being any state at all. The notion of a single group having the monopoly on violence in a society is very important for that society to be able to function. To say it's the same because both government and mafia use force to get people to pay money is missing the point completely. Having only one source of violent coercion is vital for a society to function properly (see Syria for examples of what happens when you have many sources). If you can have democratic constraints on how that violence get's used, then all the better. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leviathan_(book) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leviathan_(book)

grandalf 11y ago
> a single group having the monopoly on violence There is some truth to this from a top-down, social organization perspective. But governments don't just have a monopoly on violence, they actively use propaganda to hide the use of violence from the public, through an ongoing process of whitewashing and image management that is incompatible with democracy. Violence is ugly. If our government does it, it ought to own up to every gory detail so that the public can honestly assess its appetite for more.
- rqebmm 11y ago
  Except part of the point of a democratic society is to leave the hard decisions of state to a small group of people who are ideally best equipped to handle it. The intent is precisely for the public at large to NOT have to assess every minute, gory detail, as then they would have no time left to contribute to the society. Now, that model also relies on the ability to trust that those chosen to make the hard decisions are doing so competently and in the best interests of the society at large. It also bakes in the assumption that everyone will have to make compromises. In the immortal words of Calvin and Hobbes "A good compromise leaves everyone mad".

lucio 11y ago

There is an important difference between the mafia and legitimate governance: A Constitution and a Republic (3 powers).

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
hassiktir 11y ago
a constitutional monarchy is almost a direct parallel to many organized crime syndicates. is that not legitimate governance?
- lucio 11y ago
  King's bloodline rules because god say so... You're not a free man, you're a subject. Do you see that as "legitimate"?

fandb 11y ago

>> Larger ones have hordes of academics, journalists, philosophers, etc., proclaiming the moral righteousness of their use of lethal force and intimidation (see the "Bush Doctrine"). It plays well for the Democrats too: http://www.cnn.com/US/9812/16/clinton.iraq.speech/ http://www.cnn.com/US/9812/16/clinton.iraq.speech/ ""Their mission is to attack Iraq's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs and its military capacity to threaten its neighbors," said Clinton."

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

aianus 11y ago
And some class A ad hominems and strawmen are any better?
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
  - aianus 11y ago
    Perhaps in some parts of the world all business is conducted with violence. But in the West violence and the threat thereof is what puts gangsters and government in a separate class by themselves.

pekk 11y ago

> There is really very little difference between the mafia and legitimate governance. The name of that little difference is legitimacy.

agorabinary 11y ago
legitimate 1. according to law, lawful So the difference between the mafia and government is the use of laws? Which are rules that governments abide by? Sounds very circular indeed.