7 ms·

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

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.
  - anovikov 6y ago
    A lot of studies show that people very rarely change their beliefs - like very few people even in the U.S. changed from Republican to Democratic or back - states changed their colours mostly due to demographic changes - red and blue population had different age breakdown, birth and death rates, and different migration/naturalisation patterns which mostly determine changes in voting outcomes. This is even more true in case of such much much deeper rooted thing like this one. It's obvious: you have a cultural problem, and you can't change people (well you can, but it's called brainwashing and is illegal everywhere but maybe North Korea), so have to replace people. Mafia isn't about people being literally forced to do something with the fear or death - such an approach totally doesn't scale, even Sicily is not a Nazi death camp. It's about deeply rooted tradition to say, "respect your village elders" and "don't put your family to shame by exposing issues". And people don't even realise they have those beliefs, everyone taken separately just acts "normally", letting the whole society be exploited. Just reducing proportion of people having these beliefs in the first place - to some percentage giving "herd immunity" from them because these informal links need to be able to sufficiently propagate - solve the problem.
    - DC1350 6y ago
      > It's obvious: you have a cultural problem, and you can't change people... so have to replace people. This makes no sense at all. The government exists to serve those people who are getting replaced, so if you fix their problems by replacing them then nothing has actually been solved. You’re putting the importance of the government and the region over the people which is backwards.
    - coldtea 6y ago
      >It's obvious: you have a cultural problem, and you can't change people (well you can, but it's called brainwashing and is illegal everywhere but maybe North Korea), so have to replace people. That is social engineering (not the security term, the historical), and is associated with the worst totalitarianism (closely related to genocide and ethnocide). At the very least it's Machiavellian. And it's even more illegal than brainwashing! This "solution" sees the population from outside, as assets to be replaced, manipulated, etc to solve an abstract problem. But the problem is not "how to have Calabria without mafia" (that has several trivial solutions, from the suggested population replacement to nuking the area to a totalitarian government that maintains absolute control against the mafia). The problem is rather, "how the population of Calabria can get rid of mafia". In other words, e.g. Calabria is not just a named piece of land (for someone to rule as they see fit and do whatever to it, including removing the population) - it's first and foremost population and a culture. If the culture can't change easily (or at all), tough luck. But replacement of the population is not a solution (at least not this side of Stalin).
- gnatman 6y ago
  > Why no radical approach has been taken to fix it? And then you go on to suggest what amounts to barely obfuscated ethnic cleansing. Radical indeed.
- gherkinnn 6y ago
  To be fair, you're not the first to suggest methods like that. Soviet population transfer comes to mind. Not that I condone such measures. I find them quite revolting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_transfer_in_the_Soviet_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_transfer_in_the_Sov...
  - flurdy 6y ago
    Yup, this has happened over and over again throughout history. More recently with Stalin, with Han Chinese, in the Balkans, etc. But also in Medieval times and many centuries before. E.g when Sweden gained control over Scania (Southern tip of today's Sweden) from Denmark in the 17th century they relocated a lot of native Swedes into that area to pacify the population. (I may need to reference this, I am only remembering school history classes...) All to establish control, though we see it sometimes does quite the opposite. Though I would also think some of it is natural migration. So not always forced, but probably "encouraged". Though always more when borders have changed. Not to combat an internal "culture"/crime problem.
- Huwyt_Nashi035 6y ago
  That will only work for a short time. Those young men will still have their grandfathers' rich Sicilian blood coursing through their veins. When they return home - and they will - armed with military training and experience, and with all the fury one might reasonably expect of a young man witnessing the deliberate genocide of his people, there will be hell to pay. The demographic replacement across Europe is progressing very well, I think it would be a mistake to train and incite young European men in any way. Patience is key now. Shalom.
varispeed 6y ago
Why is it called Mafia if it functions similar to the state? What would happen if Sicily was given independence?

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.
- anovikov 6y ago
  A lot of studies show that people very rarely change their beliefs - like very few people even in the U.S. changed from Republican to Democratic or back - states changed their colours mostly due to demographic changes - red and blue population had different age breakdown, birth and death rates, and different migration/naturalisation patterns which mostly determine changes in voting outcomes. This is even more true in case of such much much deeper rooted thing like this one. It's obvious: you have a cultural problem, and you can't change people (well you can, but it's called brainwashing and is illegal everywhere but maybe North Korea), so have to replace people. Mafia isn't about people being literally forced to do something with the fear or death - such an approach totally doesn't scale, even Sicily is not a Nazi death camp. It's about deeply rooted tradition to say, "respect your village elders" and "don't put your family to shame by exposing issues". And people don't even realise they have those beliefs, everyone taken separately just acts "normally", letting the whole society be exploited. Just reducing proportion of people having these beliefs in the first place - to some percentage giving "herd immunity" from them because these informal links need to be able to sufficiently propagate - solve the problem.
  - DC1350 6y ago
    > It's obvious: you have a cultural problem, and you can't change people... so have to replace people. This makes no sense at all. The government exists to serve those people who are getting replaced, so if you fix their problems by replacing them then nothing has actually been solved. You’re putting the importance of the government and the region over the people which is backwards.
  - coldtea 6y ago
    >It's obvious: you have a cultural problem, and you can't change people (well you can, but it's called brainwashing and is illegal everywhere but maybe North Korea), so have to replace people. That is social engineering (not the security term, the historical), and is associated with the worst totalitarianism (closely related to genocide and ethnocide). At the very least it's Machiavellian. And it's even more illegal than brainwashing! This "solution" sees the population from outside, as assets to be replaced, manipulated, etc to solve an abstract problem. But the problem is not "how to have Calabria without mafia" (that has several trivial solutions, from the suggested population replacement to nuking the area to a totalitarian government that maintains absolute control against the mafia). The problem is rather, "how the population of Calabria can get rid of mafia". In other words, e.g. Calabria is not just a named piece of land (for someone to rule as they see fit and do whatever to it, including removing the population) - it's first and foremost population and a culture. If the culture can't change easily (or at all), tough luck. But replacement of the population is not a solution (at least not this side of Stalin).
gnatman 6y ago
> Why no radical approach has been taken to fix it? And then you go on to suggest what amounts to barely obfuscated ethnic cleansing. Radical indeed.
gherkinnn 6y ago
To be fair, you're not the first to suggest methods like that. Soviet population transfer comes to mind. Not that I condone such measures. I find them quite revolting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_transfer_in_the_Soviet_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_transfer_in_the_Sov...
- flurdy 6y ago
  Yup, this has happened over and over again throughout history. More recently with Stalin, with Han Chinese, in the Balkans, etc. But also in Medieval times and many centuries before. E.g when Sweden gained control over Scania (Southern tip of today's Sweden) from Denmark in the 17th century they relocated a lot of native Swedes into that area to pacify the population. (I may need to reference this, I am only remembering school history classes...) All to establish control, though we see it sometimes does quite the opposite. Though I would also think some of it is natural migration. So not always forced, but probably "encouraged". Though always more when borders have changed. Not to combat an internal "culture"/crime problem.
Huwyt_Nashi035 6y ago
That will only work for a short time. Those young men will still have their grandfathers' rich Sicilian blood coursing through their veins. When they return home - and they will - armed with military training and experience, and with all the fury one might reasonably expect of a young man witnessing the deliberate genocide of his people, there will be hell to pay. The demographic replacement across Europe is progressing very well, I think it would be a mistake to train and incite young European men in any way. Patience is key now. Shalom.

varispeed 6y ago

Why is it called Mafia if it functions similar to the state? What would happen if Sicily was given independence?