6 ms·

What Organized Crime Pays

84 points by mathattack 12y ago

dang 12y ago
It's an interesting piece written by an authority on the subject, but the title is so misleading that its negation would be closer to accurate. Accordingly we replaced it with a representative sentence from the article. Suggestions for a better title, as always, are welcome.
- Carrok 12y ago
  Umm, what? > If you worked your way up to become one of the boss’s right-hand men, you could get a monthly stipend of $32,000 to $38,000. If you were a vicecapo, second-in-command to the boss, you’d receive about $130,000 a month. And bosses—well, it’s impossible to even guess how much they can take in. Sure sounds like 'Organized Crime Pays' is an extremely accurate title.
  - slashnull 12y ago
    $i for a Few Important People:wq
    - Danieru 12y ago
      You might know this already but ZZ is faster and a bit more reliable method than :wq ZZ has the side benefit of never saving out copies into randomly named files.
      - scintill76 12y ago
        (Not the same poster) Nice, I'll keep that in mind! Love that I'm getting vim tips from comments on an article about organized crime.
        S4M 12y ago
        Actually I have no idea what this slashnull's first comment has to do with the article. There must be a pun I am not getting...
        atavistic 12y ago
        Dollar sign eye will cause the Vee Eye text editing program to insert the subsequent text at the end of the current line in a text file (in this hypothetical instance the title of the article), until it encounters the special colon operator, at which point the double you and queue letters will cause the program to write those changes to disk, and then quit. http://www.vim.org http://www.vim.org If you were SSH'd into a Linux machine serving static HTML to the world-wide web, those are the keystrokes you might issue to the vi text editor, at the command line, to modify the line in a particular file, responsible for the title of the article on this site. The user, dang, has changed the title of this article, as a moderator action, in an effort to clarify the nature of this article, and deflect any advocacy of organized crime away from Hacker News, leaving that part of the social commentary in Vice's hands, as is the tendency for most articles that Vice magazine publishes. Ha ha, get it?
      - slashnull 12y ago
        Too late. :wq is already embedded in my autonomic nervous system. Really this is what vim is about. The commands you first remember just stay with you. Just so you can forget alternatives even exist and use that memory to save new commands. Thanks either way.
      - slashnull 12y ago
        Also, find . -name "*.swp" -exec rm {} \; is also slowly getting abstracted away in my mind as a single, atomic and very useful command.
        jessaustin 12y ago
        You don't recover the editing session first?
        GregorStocks 12y ago
        You can configure Vim to put the swap files in your ~/.vim instead of the directory of the file you're editing, which in my experience is much less annoying - see https://github.com/GregorStocks/configs/blob/35ab5c3c45e5cfa9a380c56431d539ca47ea7e00/.vimrc#L65 https://github.com/GregorStocks/configs/blob/35ab5c3c45e5cfa...
        jqm 12y ago
        I have a directory in /tmp set up for swap files. And indeed, it is much less annoying than having them in the working directory.
    - cturner 12y ago
      $a
      - slashnull 12y ago
        truth
      - biot 12y ago
        A
  - dang 12y ago
    You're cherry-picking. The very next sentence is "In general, criminal organizations have a lot of members, but most of them don’t actually earn that much money." And later: "even murder doesn’t pay particularly well". So no, the title isn't accurate—it isn't representative of the article, whose point seems to be to depict multiple strata. I've taken another shot at it. If that's still unsatisfactory, please suggest an accurate, neutral title and we'll happily change it.
    - scintill76 12y ago
      I like this title ("What Organized Crime Pays"), but would also point out: "When you join the Mafia ... you wouldn’t be making all that much, though you’d probably earn more than you could at a legal job in those parts of Southern Italy." So, strictly monetarily, it looks like organized crime does pay (at least at the average person's entry level, in this particular geographical area.)
BorisMelnik 12y ago
agree title is misleading. organized crime does not mean italian mafia, which is what this post is about. the Bratva for instance is structured completely different, which I won't go into here today. even the Italians in NYC I've met who are in the family and connected are structured completely differently. many of these families have moved to completely legit businesses and just keep the fear factor in place to secure large city / gvt contracts. pay scale is on a much different scale than this. not saying the post was inaccurate at all, but it is only describing about 5% of criminal enterprise.
- Snail_Commando 12y ago
  > "many of these families have moved to completely legit businesses and just keep the fear factor in place to secure large city / gvt contracts." Protip: If your business model relies on "fear factor" you may have failed to satisfy the "completely legit business" specification.
  - teddyh 12y ago
    I agree. Note that this reasoning can also be applied to what we would think of as “normal” companies. What does this say about them?
    - jaredandrews 12y ago
      The market is not rational?
wozniacki 12y ago
A most excellent film that depicts the realities of lives of various ranks of mafioso - in this case, the Camorra, a criminal organization based in the southern Italian region of Campania - is Matteo Garrone's Gomorrah (2008)[1], based on the eponymous book by Roberto Saviano. The Camorra bosses swiftly ordered his death and Saviano even contemplated fleeing Italy, thereafter. Later he sued the very same crime bosses.[2] [1] Here's the Criterion trailer for the film http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwgKIpvLrCs http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwgKIpvLrCs [2] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/antimafia-campaigner-roberto-saviano-sues-gangsters-who-ordered-his-death-8406282.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/antimafia-cam...
- avemg 12y ago
  This article was written by Roberto Saviano.
  - wozniacki 12y ago
    Oh. I missed that part. But don't miss a chance to watch the film. Its on Hulu Plus. Although its mostly pretty bleak, the film lays bare the impressive reach of the Camorra. From waste management to high fashion !
- dbcooper 12y ago
  Saviano also adapted it as a high quality TV show, Gamorra. Worth watching. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2049116/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2049116/ The Weinstein Company has acquired the US rights. http://deadline.com/2014/04/weinstein-co-acquires-crime-drama-series-gomorra-711455/ http://deadline.com/2014/04/weinstein-co-acquires-crime-dram...
- jstalin 12y ago
  I enjoyed this film, but I recall that at the end it somehow, bizarrely, tried to connect the Camorra with the 9/11 terror attacks.
  - Snail_Commando 12y ago
new299 12y ago
Doesn't seem like a low salary to me. Seems that it's about average for Italy ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_countries_by_average_wage http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_countries_by_a... 2610USD versus 2500 they mention in the article). So I'd guess above average for an entry level position. I'd somehow guess it's also largely tax free!
- ghshephard 12y ago
  I'm not sure about Italy, but in the United States, you would definitely want to pay taxes on that income, and, an important part of organized crime (an, as we saw in Breaking Bad, not so organized crime) is laundering the ill gotten gains, paying tax on them, such that you can then spend the money without worrying about the IRS. Because, if there is one thing that scares the Mafia, it's the IRS. They are ruthless.
  - emocakes 12y ago
    shame the IRS is just getting the money for the fed (which is illegal, and doesn't go to providing any public service)
  - mathattack 12y ago
    Yes - it was the IRS that got Capone, right? (Or at least according to the movies)
- justincormack 12y ago
  Southern Italy is not average wage Italy, it is a very divided country, and there are few jobs, especially for young people, in the south and fewer well paid ones. Youth unemployment in the whole country is 42%, higher in the south.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
_random_ 12y ago
Sounds like an investment firm, but with a bit more vertical mobility :).
kriro 12y ago
There's also a couple of studies, books etc. that have looked into the earning potential of gang members (it is extremely low). "Gang Leader for a Day" is a nice read in that regard.
- justincormack 12y ago
  "In Search of Respect" by Philippe Bourgouis is also good - technically an academic book, but very readable.
lotsofmangos 12y ago
The freakonomic piece on the economics of crack dealing is a good counterpoint to this, given they found that many people in that line of work were actually earning less than minimum wage. - http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_levitt_analyzes_crack_economics?language=en http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_levitt_analyzes_crack_econom...

84 points by mathattack 12y ago

dang 12y ago

It's an interesting piece written by an authority on the subject, but the title is so misleading that its negation would be closer to accurate. Accordingly we replaced it with a representative sentence from the article. Suggestions for a better title, as always, are welcome.

Carrok 12y ago
Umm, what? > If you worked your way up to become one of the boss’s right-hand men, you could get a monthly stipend of $32,000 to $38,000. If you were a vicecapo, second-in-command to the boss, you’d receive about $130,000 a month. And bosses—well, it’s impossible to even guess how much they can take in. Sure sounds like 'Organized Crime Pays' is an extremely accurate title.
- slashnull 12y ago
  $i for a Few Important People:wq
  - Danieru 12y ago
    You might know this already but ZZ is faster and a bit more reliable method than :wq ZZ has the side benefit of never saving out copies into randomly named files.
    - scintill76 12y ago
      (Not the same poster) Nice, I'll keep that in mind! Love that I'm getting vim tips from comments on an article about organized crime.
      - S4M 12y ago
        Actually I have no idea what this slashnull's first comment has to do with the article. There must be a pun I am not getting...
        atavistic 12y ago
        Dollar sign eye will cause the Vee Eye text editing program to insert the subsequent text at the end of the current line in a text file (in this hypothetical instance the title of the article), until it encounters the special colon operator, at which point the double you and queue letters will cause the program to write those changes to disk, and then quit. http://www.vim.org http://www.vim.org If you were SSH'd into a Linux machine serving static HTML to the world-wide web, those are the keystrokes you might issue to the vi text editor, at the command line, to modify the line in a particular file, responsible for the title of the article on this site. The user, dang, has changed the title of this article, as a moderator action, in an effort to clarify the nature of this article, and deflect any advocacy of organized crime away from Hacker News, leaving that part of the social commentary in Vice's hands, as is the tendency for most articles that Vice magazine publishes. Ha ha, get it?
    - slashnull 12y ago
      Too late. :wq is already embedded in my autonomic nervous system. Really this is what vim is about. The commands you first remember just stay with you. Just so you can forget alternatives even exist and use that memory to save new commands. Thanks either way.
    - slashnull 12y ago
      Also, find . -name "*.swp" -exec rm {} \; is also slowly getting abstracted away in my mind as a single, atomic and very useful command.
      - jessaustin 12y ago
        You don't recover the editing session first?
      - GregorStocks 12y ago
        You can configure Vim to put the swap files in your ~/.vim instead of the directory of the file you're editing, which in my experience is much less annoying - see https://github.com/GregorStocks/configs/blob/35ab5c3c45e5cfa9a380c56431d539ca47ea7e00/.vimrc#L65 https://github.com/GregorStocks/configs/blob/35ab5c3c45e5cfa...
        jqm 12y ago
        I have a directory in /tmp set up for swap files. And indeed, it is much less annoying than having them in the working directory.
  - cturner 12y ago
    $a
    - slashnull 12y ago
      truth
    - biot 12y ago
      A
- dang 12y ago
  You're cherry-picking. The very next sentence is "In general, criminal organizations have a lot of members, but most of them don’t actually earn that much money." And later: "even murder doesn’t pay particularly well". So no, the title isn't accurate—it isn't representative of the article, whose point seems to be to depict multiple strata. I've taken another shot at it. If that's still unsatisfactory, please suggest an accurate, neutral title and we'll happily change it.
  - scintill76 12y ago
    I like this title ("What Organized Crime Pays"), but would also point out: "When you join the Mafia ... you wouldn’t be making all that much, though you’d probably earn more than you could at a legal job in those parts of Southern Italy." So, strictly monetarily, it looks like organized crime does pay (at least at the average person's entry level, in this particular geographical area.)

BorisMelnik 12y ago

agree title is misleading. organized crime does not mean italian mafia, which is what this post is about. the Bratva for instance is structured completely different, which I won't go into here today. even the Italians in NYC I've met who are in the family and connected are structured completely differently. many of these families have moved to completely legit businesses and just keep the fear factor in place to secure large city / gvt contracts. pay scale is on a much different scale than this. not saying the post was inaccurate at all, but it is only describing about 5% of criminal enterprise.

Snail_Commando 12y ago
> "many of these families have moved to completely legit businesses and just keep the fear factor in place to secure large city / gvt contracts." Protip: If your business model relies on "fear factor" you may have failed to satisfy the "completely legit business" specification.
- teddyh 12y ago
  I agree. Note that this reasoning can also be applied to what we would think of as “normal” companies. What does this say about them?
  - jaredandrews 12y ago
    The market is not rational?

wozniacki 12y ago

A most excellent film that depicts the realities of lives of various ranks of mafioso - in this case, the Camorra, a criminal organization based in the southern Italian region of Campania - is Matteo Garrone's Gomorrah (2008)[1], based on the eponymous book by Roberto Saviano. The Camorra bosses swiftly ordered his death and Saviano even contemplated fleeing Italy, thereafter. Later he sued the very same crime bosses.[2] [1] Here's the Criterion trailer for the film http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwgKIpvLrCs http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwgKIpvLrCs [2] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/antimafia-campaigner-roberto-saviano-sues-gangsters-who-ordered-his-death-8406282.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/antimafia-cam...

avemg 12y ago
This article was written by Roberto Saviano.
- wozniacki 12y ago
  Oh. I missed that part. But don't miss a chance to watch the film. Its on Hulu Plus. Although its mostly pretty bleak, the film lays bare the impressive reach of the Camorra. From waste management to high fashion !
dbcooper 12y ago
Saviano also adapted it as a high quality TV show, Gamorra. Worth watching. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2049116/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2049116/ The Weinstein Company has acquired the US rights. http://deadline.com/2014/04/weinstein-co-acquires-crime-drama-series-gomorra-711455/ http://deadline.com/2014/04/weinstein-co-acquires-crime-dram...
jstalin 12y ago
I enjoyed this film, but I recall that at the end it somehow, bizarrely, tried to connect the Camorra with the 9/11 terror attacks.
- Snail_Commando 12y ago

new299 12y ago

Doesn't seem like a low salary to me. Seems that it's about average for Italy ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_countries_by_average_wage http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_countries_by_a... 2610USD versus 2500 they mention in the article). So I'd guess above average for an entry level position. I'd somehow guess it's also largely tax free!

ghshephard 12y ago
I'm not sure about Italy, but in the United States, you would definitely want to pay taxes on that income, and, an important part of organized crime (an, as we saw in Breaking Bad, not so organized crime) is laundering the ill gotten gains, paying tax on them, such that you can then spend the money without worrying about the IRS. Because, if there is one thing that scares the Mafia, it's the IRS. They are ruthless.
- emocakes 12y ago
  shame the IRS is just getting the money for the fed (which is illegal, and doesn't go to providing any public service)
- mathattack 12y ago
  Yes - it was the IRS that got Capone, right? (Or at least according to the movies)
justincormack 12y ago
Southern Italy is not average wage Italy, it is a very divided country, and there are few jobs, especially for young people, in the south and fewer well paid ones. Youth unemployment in the whole country is 42%, higher in the south.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

_random_ 12y ago

Sounds like an investment firm, but with a bit more vertical mobility :).

kriro 12y ago

There's also a couple of studies, books etc. that have looked into the earning potential of gang members (it is extremely low). "Gang Leader for a Day" is a nice read in that regard.

justincormack 12y ago
"In Search of Respect" by Philippe Bourgouis is also good - technically an academic book, but very readable.

lotsofmangos 12y ago

The freakonomic piece on the economics of crack dealing is a good counterpoint to this, given they found that many people in that line of work were actually earning less than minimum wage. - http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_levitt_analyzes_crack_economics?language=en http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_levitt_analyzes_crack_econom...