4 ms·

Why no radical approach has been taken to fix it?

majewsky 6y ago
Whoever tries to undermine the actions of the mob is next in line for a tragic accident. In a way, it's a coordination problem. If everyone outside of the mob were to unite at once against them, the mob wouldn't stand a chance. But that's not how activism works.
- btbuildem 6y ago
  > If everyone [outside of the mob] were to unite at once That's basically how the mafia works
throwaway0a5e 6y ago
Because it's almost certainly not as simple and unambigious as he's claiming. Everyone in NYC thinks they know all the ways they can fix Buffalo
- georgeecollins 6y ago
  >> Everyone in NYC thinks they know all the ways they can fix Buffalo This sentence intrigued me, but as a life long Californian I wasn't sure what you meant.
  - misthop 6y ago
    I assume the meant Albany - as in everyone in NYC thinks they know how to fix the state government. Or maybe there is a huge mob presence in Bufallo?
  - datameta 6y ago
    While technically in the same state Buffalo, NY is a city on the Canadian border that is farther away from NYC than Washington D.C. is. As a new yorker, I can safely say my fellow new yorkers can't honestly pretend to know how to tackle what issues Buffalo might be facing.
- macspoofing 6y ago
  >Everyone in NYC thinks they know all the ways they can fix Buffalo Why would NYC try to solve Buffalo's problems? Isn't that the job of the Buffalo municipal government and state government in Albany?
izietto 6y ago
It is not so easy, even to explain. Many books have been written about organized criminality in Italy and many have to be written yet. Consider that Cosa Nostra (the Sicilian Mafia) at the beginning of '90 had so much power that managed to start a negotiation with high functionaries of the Italian government about which laws could pass and which not (la "Trattativa Stato-Mafia", the "State-Mafia Pact"). In those regions, Italian government and organized criminality have been the same thing for a lot of time. Would you fight yourself? Also, let me add that a radical approach had been taken by two judges, Falcone and Borsellino. They almost destroyed Cosa Nostra, at the cost of their own lives. They have been both murdered by Cosa Nostra, along with their security, in the 1992. For the curious, this is the wiki page of the State-Mafia Pact: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State-Mafia_Pact https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State-Mafia_Pact
- anovikov 6y ago
  Well, for example it can be countered by offering all young men from these regions jobs outside. For example, in the military, creating a large mobile military force recruited from these regions for operations in say, Afghanistan, offering them good pay and discouraging them from returning - and encouraging people from other regions or countries moving in their place (for example by lowering barrier of entry for immigrants as long as they are going there, or increasing otherwise) - until "locals" become a minority and their social connection networks disrupts or become irrelevant. This mafia thing is definitely cultural - "it is the way things are done there" - so it can be fixed by replacing/diluting people.
  - coldtea 6y ago
    >Well, for example it can be countered by offering all young men from these regions jobs outside. For example, in the military, creating a large mobile military force recruited from these regions for operations in say, Afghanistan, offering them good pay and discouraging them from returning - and encouraging people from other regions or countries moving in their place So, striping the place from its inhabitans, sending them to imperialist wars to be killed and kill, and bringing people from other countries to take their place? Keeping the mafia sounds better than this scheme. Why not buldoze their houses and kill every first born while at it? >This mafia thing is definitely cultural - "it is the way things are done there" - so it can be fixed by replacing/diluting people. Yeah, like any cultural problem can be fixed by nuking a region.
redis_mlc 6y ago
It's not just the mob - even "legit" businesses like consumer product mfgs. have 2 sets of books, don't pay taxes, etc. in Italy and Greece. Greece has literally never been financially viable in modern times since founding (ie. the last century) largely due to tax evasion. Western European countries have declared war on Greece in the past to make it pay bonds. Currently the CCP controls Greek UN votes via ownership of their largest port and loans (aka debt trap.) https://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-un-rights/greece-blocks-eu-statement-on-china-human-rights-at-u-n-idUSKBN1990FP https://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-un-rights/greece-block...
kzrdude 6y ago
I guess the system is tugging away at it and trying to fix corruption. Italy has the strictest approach to organized crime in Europe. So the government tries to go at it with lots of resources. This court proceeding for example was the result of a raid where 2500 police officiers participated (and years of work). See for example https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/13/italy-mafia-trial-ndragheta-calabria https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/13/italy-mafia-tr...
InvOfSmallC 6y ago
It's hard to do something about an org that is everywhere in the world.
elliekelly 6y ago
If you want to go down a rabbit hole you should read about the recent Italian trial of ~300 mobsters. IIRC they have something like 800 witnesses scheduled to appear and they had to build a special courtroom to hold everyone. One of the accused was in hiding and police only located him after finding his cooking channel on YouTube. Unfortunately English-language reporting is pretty light on the details presented in court but here are two articles to get you started. About the trial: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-55633091 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-55633091 About the prosecutor: https://www.independent.co.uk/independentpremium/mafia-trial-italy-nicola-gratteri-ndrangheta-b1787416.html https://www.independent.co.uk/independentpremium/mafia-trial...
philwelch 6y ago
Mussolini cracked down on organized crime pretty hard. But he didn’t completely wipe them out, and so when WW2 rolls along and the Allies are invading Italy, they actually get in contact with the surviving mafiosi and cut a deal with them to gather intelligence and organize resistance against the fascist state. This sort of thing continued after the war because the Mafia are also reliably anti-communist. So yeah—a radical approach was taken to fix it, and then organized crime was reinstalled by the OSS and the CIA.

Whoever tries to undermine the actions of the mob is next in line for a tragic accident. In a way, it's a coordination problem. If everyone outside of the mob were to unite at once against them, the mob wouldn't stand a chance. But that's not how activism works.

btbuildem 6y ago
> If everyone [outside of the mob] were to unite at once That's basically how the mafia works

throwaway0a5e 6y ago

Because it's almost certainly not as simple and unambigious as he's claiming. Everyone in NYC thinks they know all the ways they can fix Buffalo

georgeecollins 6y ago
>> Everyone in NYC thinks they know all the ways they can fix Buffalo This sentence intrigued me, but as a life long Californian I wasn't sure what you meant.
- misthop 6y ago
  I assume the meant Albany - as in everyone in NYC thinks they know how to fix the state government. Or maybe there is a huge mob presence in Bufallo?
- datameta 6y ago
  While technically in the same state Buffalo, NY is a city on the Canadian border that is farther away from NYC than Washington D.C. is. As a new yorker, I can safely say my fellow new yorkers can't honestly pretend to know how to tackle what issues Buffalo might be facing.
macspoofing 6y ago
>Everyone in NYC thinks they know all the ways they can fix Buffalo Why would NYC try to solve Buffalo's problems? Isn't that the job of the Buffalo municipal government and state government in Albany?

izietto 6y ago

It is not so easy, even to explain. Many books have been written about organized criminality in Italy and many have to be written yet. Consider that Cosa Nostra (the Sicilian Mafia) at the beginning of '90 had so much power that managed to start a negotiation with high functionaries of the Italian government about which laws could pass and which not (la "Trattativa Stato-Mafia", the "State-Mafia Pact"). In those regions, Italian government and organized criminality have been the same thing for a lot of time. Would you fight yourself? Also, let me add that a radical approach had been taken by two judges, Falcone and Borsellino. They almost destroyed Cosa Nostra, at the cost of their own lives. They have been both murdered by Cosa Nostra, along with their security, in the 1992. For the curious, this is the wiki page of the State-Mafia Pact: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State-Mafia_Pact https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State-Mafia_Pact

anovikov 6y ago
Well, for example it can be countered by offering all young men from these regions jobs outside. For example, in the military, creating a large mobile military force recruited from these regions for operations in say, Afghanistan, offering them good pay and discouraging them from returning - and encouraging people from other regions or countries moving in their place (for example by lowering barrier of entry for immigrants as long as they are going there, or increasing otherwise) - until "locals" become a minority and their social connection networks disrupts or become irrelevant. This mafia thing is definitely cultural - "it is the way things are done there" - so it can be fixed by replacing/diluting people.
- coldtea 6y ago
  >Well, for example it can be countered by offering all young men from these regions jobs outside. For example, in the military, creating a large mobile military force recruited from these regions for operations in say, Afghanistan, offering them good pay and discouraging them from returning - and encouraging people from other regions or countries moving in their place So, striping the place from its inhabitans, sending them to imperialist wars to be killed and kill, and bringing people from other countries to take their place? Keeping the mafia sounds better than this scheme. Why not buldoze their houses and kill every first born while at it? >This mafia thing is definitely cultural - "it is the way things are done there" - so it can be fixed by replacing/diluting people. Yeah, like any cultural problem can be fixed by nuking a region.

redis_mlc 6y ago

It's not just the mob - even "legit" businesses like consumer product mfgs. have 2 sets of books, don't pay taxes, etc. in Italy and Greece. Greece has literally never been financially viable in modern times since founding (ie. the last century) largely due to tax evasion. Western European countries have declared war on Greece in the past to make it pay bonds. Currently the CCP controls Greek UN votes via ownership of their largest port and loans (aka debt trap.) https://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-un-rights/greece-blocks-eu-statement-on-china-human-rights-at-u-n-idUSKBN1990FP https://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-un-rights/greece-block...

kzrdude 6y ago

I guess the system is tugging away at it and trying to fix corruption. Italy has the strictest approach to organized crime in Europe. So the government tries to go at it with lots of resources. This court proceeding for example was the result of a raid where 2500 police officiers participated (and years of work). See for example https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/13/italy-mafia-trial-ndragheta-calabria https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/13/italy-mafia-tr...

InvOfSmallC 6y ago

It's hard to do something about an org that is everywhere in the world.

elliekelly 6y ago

If you want to go down a rabbit hole you should read about the recent Italian trial of ~300 mobsters. IIRC they have something like 800 witnesses scheduled to appear and they had to build a special courtroom to hold everyone. One of the accused was in hiding and police only located him after finding his cooking channel on YouTube. Unfortunately English-language reporting is pretty light on the details presented in court but here are two articles to get you started. About the trial: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-55633091 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-55633091 About the prosecutor: https://www.independent.co.uk/independentpremium/mafia-trial-italy-nicola-gratteri-ndrangheta-b1787416.html https://www.independent.co.uk/independentpremium/mafia-trial...

philwelch 6y ago

Mussolini cracked down on organized crime pretty hard. But he didn’t completely wipe them out, and so when WW2 rolls along and the Allies are invading Italy, they actually get in contact with the surviving mafiosi and cut a deal with them to gather intelligence and organize resistance against the fascist state. This sort of thing continued after the war because the Mafia are also reliably anti-communist. So yeah—a radical approach was taken to fix it, and then organized crime was reinstalled by the OSS and the CIA.