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NYC has a markedly more pronounced history with organized crime - including that extant sort which is associated with the financial industry - and the municipal

NYC has a markedly more pronounced history with organized crime - including that extant sort which is associated with the financial industry - and the municipal culture that develops to deal with it. Of course, this implies that now that Dallas is getting a stock exchange, your claim might become salient in a decade or two.

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woodruffw 1y ago
Emphasis on history: NYC very famously broke its organized crime groups in the 1980s and 1990s. It's what made Giuliani famous before he became a politician[1]. (I would hazard a demographic claim around organized crime: just about any mid-sized city with large suburbs almost certainly has more per-capita organized crime than NYC does. You just don't hear about it because most of it is of the "extortion for trash pickup" variety, not the "Murder, Inc." variety.) [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mafia_Commission_Trial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mafia_Commission_Trial
- underlipton 1y ago
  I took pains to mention the extant nature of organized financial criminality which yet influences NYC (and state, and national) politics. Wall Street gets their way a lot when they shouldn't, and it's because government officials and elites are happy to pledge fealty to money over law. As for Giuliani, he himself is a mobster; he's facing the same RICO charges he leveled at crime bosses as a prosecutor. I think this speaks to my point, which is that NYC corruption vis a vis organized crime didn't go away, it just became part of the institution.
  - woodruffw 1y ago
    I don’t think Wall Street is responsible for that much corruption at the city level. I agree about the federal level, but at the city level it’s probably mostly real estate with NGOs as a close second. (But again, I don’t think it’s been evidenced that NYC is uniquely corrupt, which was the original claim.) > As for Giuliani, he himself is a mobster; he's facing the same RICO charges he leveled at crime bosses as a prosecutor. Except that the man is nowhere close to the halls of power in NYC, and hasn’t been so for three decades! He is of course a crook, but that doesn’t evidence NYC being corrupt in 2025. It evidences Giuliani being a crook at the federal level.

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woodruffw 1y ago

Emphasis on history: NYC very famously broke its organized crime groups in the 1980s and 1990s. It's what made Giuliani famous before he became a politician[1]. (I would hazard a demographic claim around organized crime: just about any mid-sized city with large suburbs almost certainly has more per-capita organized crime than NYC does. You just don't hear about it because most of it is of the "extortion for trash pickup" variety, not the "Murder, Inc." variety.) [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mafia_Commission_Trial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mafia_Commission_Trial

underlipton 1y ago
I took pains to mention the extant nature of organized financial criminality which yet influences NYC (and state, and national) politics. Wall Street gets their way a lot when they shouldn't, and it's because government officials and elites are happy to pledge fealty to money over law. As for Giuliani, he himself is a mobster; he's facing the same RICO charges he leveled at crime bosses as a prosecutor. I think this speaks to my point, which is that NYC corruption vis a vis organized crime didn't go away, it just became part of the institution.
- woodruffw 1y ago
  I don’t think Wall Street is responsible for that much corruption at the city level. I agree about the federal level, but at the city level it’s probably mostly real estate with NGOs as a close second. (But again, I don’t think it’s been evidenced that NYC is uniquely corrupt, which was the original claim.) > As for Giuliani, he himself is a mobster; he's facing the same RICO charges he leveled at crime bosses as a prosecutor. Except that the man is nowhere close to the halls of power in NYC, and hasn’t been so for three decades! He is of course a crook, but that doesn’t evidence NYC being corrupt in 2025. It evidences Giuliani being a crook at the federal level.