Comment by weland | Hacker News Reader

Comment by weland | Hacker News Reader

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I haven't lived in the times of Al Capone, but I have lived in a country where Al Capone-like stuff was still happening at the time, and I can confirm this.

Local organized crime leaders had no more disdain for law than most policemen, prosecutors, judges or politicians. However, due to the nature of their activity, they had to maintain a reputation of honesty and reliability.

People feared them, but they were generally true to their word. If you paid the protection tax, your shop was protected. Of course, the tax could be raised without any advance notice, but more astute negotiators generally managed to delay enforcement by a few weeks. But your shop was fine.

Policemen, on the other hand, did nothing of that sort. Even when not actively assisting the crooks, there was no proactive protection of any kind. The police could only step in after your shop was devastated for the first time -- and even then, the usual process was that you'd file a complaint and, after the legally-required 30 days, the local police would send you a short letter saying they couldn't do anything due to lack of evidence. Assuming, that is, that the post office didn't lose the letter.

Law enforcement agents were seen as very unreliable partners: sometimes they'd help civilians, sometimes they'd just stay out of it, and oftentimes they'd blatantly and obviously take the side of the mobster who was paying them to look the other way.

The crooks, on the other hand, were seen as reliable. Yes, they were ruthless, but you could generally count on their help, if you were willing to pay the price.

We talk about police, shopkeepers, mobsters, politicians as if they're separate factions in society. I just want to add this:

I've travelled to this country (GDP per capita ~$1500) and stayed with this huge family. In the city I stayed in, there was one suburb where every house was part of the same family with the same last name. There must have been 500 to 1000 members, who knows. Inside one family there were policemen, shopkeepers, maids, factory owners, factory workers, businessmen, and family members with connections to mobsters (I couldn't pin down the mobsters and politicians among them exactly). In this country family is life. All members of the family generally love and respect everyone else in the same family. Their family ties are a lot strong than ties they make at their "work". The first thing we did when I arrived to stay with the family was to meet the mobster of the city so as to protect me from everyone else. One of the mobster's primary function was to act as a middleman for paying "fees" to the right politician to get bureaucratic matters resolved efficiently. (e.g. getting a visa in a few days instead of a month or two without "fee". In a way, they are lobbyists the common people can afford). The family ties cut across economic, social, and political boundaries. The fact that mobsters thrive there means they are part of the stable equilibrium. It wouldn't be possible to say "Let's get rid of the mobsters" - that's like saying "Let's get rid of the lobbyists from the US.". Politicians are good at politics, and often have little technical knowledge of the world outside their workplace. That's why they rely on lobbyists and mobsters to tell them what to do. Often, the law does not describe the entirety of the world.

GDP ~$1500/ Extended Family of 500-1000 members inhabiting a whole suburb....

It's interesting how those two types of things often go together.

Obviously there are a lot of governance issues there and the stable equilibrium is a local maxima in utility...I can see how any substantial improvement can only come at the risk of instability and destruction of quality of life first. I did feel very happy there, but probably because I was a guest and they treat guests very well.

If you look at history, it's pretty clear this is the normal state of humanity.

I, too, absorbed a bit of the sneering disdain for patriotism that a lot of us did as children, but I've since come to understand that it is actually a serious advance in human affairs. Patriotism is a brilliant psychological hack on the built-in "family" tendency of humans that hacks it to permit building larger political/social structures by hacking the humans to see that essentially as their new "family". Seeing only when it sometimes causes excess is missing the forest for the webworm infestation.

I'm reading a book on Utopias by Lewis Mumford and he explains that most of the utopias always tried to make sure children weren't too attached to their families. Family can prevent people from pursuing their goals or the skills that they're very good at. The most obvious is example is geography where you can't move to another country.

I think Orwell's 1984 was also about a utopia trying to make sure children weren't too attached to their families. ;)

You miss the part where mobsters don't only make their money from illegal but moral activities. There is plenty of theft and creating the problems they charge money for protection from. Reliable, maybe, but still oppressive.

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