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Comment by viandante | Hacker News Reader

Come on... Camorra, 'Ndrangheta and Mafia are not the same thing. Neither every one that borrows money at too high interest comes from Mafia. There is not such thing as a huge, bank, single, Mafia organization in Italy.

And in this article there are not even comparison of this crime (extortionate lending) in Italy with other countries.

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"And in this article there are not even comparison of this crime (extortionate lending) in Italy with other countries."

I'm not sure what you mean by this, but if you're insinuating that it happens across Europe, then that's not true. The "extortionate lending market' so to say (of the extra-legal kind) is very, very small (to the point of non-existent) in Western European countries, whereas (according to this article and some others I've read) it's a sizable portion of Italy's GDP. That's an unacceptable situation.

> "And in this article there are not even comparison of this crime (extortionate lending) in Italy with other countries."

> I'm not sure what you mean by this, but if you're insinuating that it happens across Europe, then that's not true.

Italian-based organized crime does its business everywhere in Europe with success.

The only difference is that in Italy this dirty business is not hidden at all because criminals also run "consumer branches", while in the rest of EU they hide themselves behind commercial banks or companies.

Take for example waste management and disposal. Most of EU and international waste goes through the hand of organised crime [1] that offer lower prices and more efficient services to municipalities and states. This always happens through proxy companies with crystal-clear records.

Germany thought it was free of organised crime. Then the Duisburg killing happened [2] and they opened their eyes.

[1] http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=83BVyffqnJEC&pg=PA117... [2] http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mafiamorde_von_Duisburg

You're right.

Some people don't understand the importance of Mafia in all the world - maybe 100 years ago it was limited to Italy, then it moved to USA, to East-Europe and so on, but mass-media still say it's limited to Italy. Ok, keep on living in the wonderland, I can't say any more..

They're "using" what they've earned in decades of selling drugs, prostitution and so on. Now they're honest employers recycling money. That's it.

I suggest you to read some books from Salvatore Lupo (Giovanni Falcone's "Cose di Cosa Nostra" too is a good introduction, ...), an Italian historian, whose activity is centered to study mafia and its origins.

Isn't their "higher efficiency" of waste disposal due to the fact they just dump it into the ocean rather than doing it properly?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste_dumping_by_th...

The link also mentions the possibility that this is what pissed off Somalis and spurred the takeoff of piracy. (Not trying to justify it, please flame me for the right reason.)

> Isn't their "higher efficiency" of waste disposal due to the fact they just dump it into the ocean rather than doing it properly?

That is the "lower prices" part. The higher efficiency is due to the fact that the other legally-run companies are often hindered in their daily tasks by these organisations. In the last few years Italy has seen: fake strikes organised by bribed union leaders, waste treatment plants accidentally burned, key managers being forced to resign over "personal matters"…

You do not need to be that more efficient if you can make the others much less efficient.

That wikipedia page has an apostrophe in its URL:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste_dumping_by_t...

You are probably right. But until somebody shows me a table comparing OCSE countries, I keep thinking the writer of the article has watched too many movies of the Godfather.

Come on... Camorra, 'Ndrangheta and Mafia are not the same thing.

Does it really matter? Isn't it more like you can see them as different branches of The Mafia, merely distinguishable from one another by their operation area (inside Italy)? The fact that Italian economy (and government, or society as a whole? But this would be another discussion!) is highly infiltrated by The Mafia (either active, by protection money or via loan-sharking, i.e.) and that an economic crises is a gift from heaven for them (there's a lot of black money to be laundered, in one way or the other), there's no need to distinguish between the different groups, IMHO.

I don't say that these groups and implications are an Italian singularity, but in Italy the implications for the Economy are maybe the worst (at least in the Western world). Or maybe I'm just naive?

It only matters because it makes you sound like you don't know what you're talking about. There is really no such thing as the "Mafia". It's a lot like calling every extremist Islamist group a branch of "Al Qaeda" – i.e., lumping a lot of categorically different groups into an imaginary hierarchy created by law enforcement and the media as a convenient scapegoat.

Where are you from? If you are from US, what you say is like taking all the criminal bands and small org across US and say: look what the US mob is doing...

I think, in this case and discussion, it's just about the scale of the influence and power. So yes, if you want to measure the influence and the power of the american mob to the US economy: sum it up and don't distinguish between different groups.

I agree on the scale, but then you really need to put a table comparing with other countries. What happens if I say Italians eat 100 M tonnes of ice scream per year? Is it a lot? A lot compared to what?

I don't agree on the influence and power and that's exactly the point. If you sum up all the US criminals, you get a raw index of criminality in the country, not how much power few criminals have over US people. If all US criminals where part of the same organization, the infamous US mob, that would be a huge problem then. But US mob does not exist, the same as Mafia does not rule all criminality in Italy.

Thank you. Pretty much any time you see the term "Mafia", you know you're dealing with amateur pseudo-journalism.

I came here to point out that Sicilian organized crime is probably not the "bank" here. Sicilian crime syndicates are generally not as powerful as the Campania/Napoli groups these days.

The Sicilian tradition of protection rackets is actually based on an (arguably) noble history of maintaining the integrity of blood family against a constant stream of outside conquerors. I'm not defending organized crime in any way shape or form, but lumping the protection rackets together with drug traffickers and other gangs is just kind of wrong on some level.

Your Sicily example and the article remind me of other "syndicates" operating in the wake of disaster and conflict. I'd read somewhere that the Yakuza have been tolerated for so long in Japan because of the social services and "protection" / "law enforcement" they provided in the aftermath of World War II. In Beirut, Hezbollah provides social services and protection that the State can't (or won't) particularly to the marginalized Palestinian refugee population.

Likewise, I'm not defending the tactics, but there's an interesting thread here.

It's definitely a common theme around the world.

I think it's not a coincidence that these places are islands or geographic crossroads where outside invasions are frequent during their history.

Speaking of Japan, here's another interesting variation on the theme: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zaibatsu

Note that the names of the Zaibatsu families are some of today's biggest names in industry and finance.

In the article, they probably meant "organized crime" as a whole. To a foreigner, Camorra and 'Ndrangheta don't say much.

They are not a huge single organized crime organization as the article says. There is no such thing. I bet legal lobbies in US deal with much more power and money than the single most powerful crime org in Italy.

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