Oh no, they built tons of cheap affordable housing. How terrible of them!
I’d be interested to hear the viewpoints of Sicilians on this one
I’d be interested to hear the viewpoints of Sicilians on this one
Yes, the mafia built housing, but it’s not the kind of social housing we might hope for—it’s mostly slum-like. Of course, the city of Palermo is also EXTREMELY densely populated—I read something like the fourth-most densely populated city in Europe in a magazine once, but can’t source that now, so take it with a grain of salt.
Nota bene: I’m not Italian myself; my wife’s family has their roots in Sicily.
[1] https://www.marememoriaviva.it/ (website only (?) in Italian)
It may be not what we hope for, but isn't it pretty much the same as what happens when the government builds it? I mean, the "projects" aren't exactly the shining example of what "we might hope for" either. It looks like this way of solving the problem is bound to fail whoever tries it - be it the well-intentioned government or the mafia.
If the alternative to slums is tent cities, I hope for slums.
It's like saying "oh, the local feudal Lord helps us fight bandits!" - yeah, but he can also cut you down in the street without due process, doesn't care about your opinion, and might enforce ius primae noctis, without any recourse.
It's not exactly the same, because
> - yeah, but he can also cut you down in the street without due process, doesn't care about your opinion, and might enforce ius primae noctis, without any recourse.
If the mafioso goes too far they lose the support of the locals.
I mean, sure, the population has no recourse when some henchman rapes some bride, but the organisation's management usually enforce their rules on their own members rigourously and violently, too.
In the case of losing what little support they have with no profit involved, it's not hard to see why these organisations don't actually allow Droit De Signeur.
They're a business, first and foremost. Allow, even encourage, violence to increase profits? Sure! Use violence just for kicks? Probably not.
No, I'm saying that it's not exactly the same as fuedal overloads are.
Organised crime are a business, first and foremost, and like all businesses (whether legal or not) focuses on profit.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assize_of_Arms_of_1181
[2] https://academic.oup.com/book/39423/chapter-abstract/3391457...
The reality is businesses (including organized crime) are made up of individuals, who do illogical and short-sighted things all the time.
For me, if taxes are used for the society as a whole and not pocketed by a small elite, I'm totally ok to pay them.
But the higher the taxes, the better the quality of the services/infrastructures I expect.
Which part of this appeared to be pro-mafia to you?
>> It's not exactly the same, because
>> If the mafioso goes too far they lose the support of the locals.
>> I mean, sure, the population has no recourse when some henchman rapes some bride, but the organisation's management usually enforce their rules on their own members rigourously and violently, too.
>> In the case of losing what little support they have with no profit involved, it's not hard to see why these organisations don't actually allow Droit De Signeur.
>> They're a business, first and foremost. Allow, even encourage, violence to increase profits? Sure! Use violence just for kicks? Probably not.
I mean, to me, exactly none of that is pro-mafia.
(Reading on GP, of course, but I did greatly enjoy “Well, Actually, Normal Form.)
I know of 5 kinds of posts:
- interesting (uncontroversial)
- news (controversial by default)
- I made something for fun (yay)
- I made something for profit (boo!)
- philosophical
Well, all of it. You put mafia folks into realm of rationality, when we know from numerous accounts (as in thousands and more) that they are extremely emotional, do stupid things and fuck up almost everything they touch, even their own future. Smart criminals behave very differently, its more about negligence and lack of efficient state counter-measures that allowed them to exist and thrive.
Now when we talk about mafia I grant 1 exception - current calabrian mafia (one and only Ndrangheta) is so good at money laundering that other crime syndicates globally pay it a fee to launder their money, this outsourcing is more effective and cheaper than homemade solutions. I think last time I checked it was maybe 100 billion USD business yearly.
Ndrangheta is so good they are spread like cancer through most Europe, even ie Switzerland ain't immune to them. In eastern part of EU they corrupt poorer places like Slovakia directly via governments and prime minister and don't even hide it very much, and steal and wash most of money via massive EU development funds. There is absolutely nobody there who doesn't know about this scheme running for at least 15 years and various other schemes ie endless highways building which cost 3x as much as in Germany with terrible resulting quality, and so on... tells you something about society and why capable folks often just leave and never come back, but getting off topic here.
That's not what "pro-mafia" means.
> Well, all of it. You put mafia folks into realm of rationality
Historians may debate to which extent Hitler, Stalin (and Vlad Tepes and Caligula and...) were rational. That doesn't make those historians who argue that they were in fact (more or less) rational "pro-Hitler" or "pro-Stalin".
In short, I don't think the word "pro" means what you think it means.
That's not really the case. The only way people can express a loss of support is by telling authorities where to find this or that boss in hiding, which happens extremely rarely (because a lot of bosses are not actually in hiding at any given time). In some cases, towns are effectively led from afar - footsoldiers just roll in whenever they need to, like before local elections - so there is very little anyone can do.
> the organisation's management usually enforce their rules on their own members rigourously and violently, too.
This is a romanticised view. There are no rules, what matters is only who can project the most violence and/or control the most money.
I agree that they're a business first and foremost, but a lot of mafiosi do actually enjoy expressing violence. Most of them come from poor backgrounds and lived through traumatizing experiences pretty early in life.
This wasn't actually a thing.
Well, the whole point of the Mafia is that it's a sort of reactionary movement to defeudalisation/uniformisation in places that are far away from where the power centralizes (the exact same reason why Yakuza started after the unification and why a lot of gangsters are from Kyushu).
It also pisses me off that people use the word mafia inappropriately, for example "Russian Mafia" or "Moroccan Mafia" have no meaning, these are not feudal organization like Mafia or Yakuza
Should we update wikipedia?
[1] https://www.lafeltrinelli.it/societa-feudale-libro-marc-bloc...
What about one day you send your daughters to school, but it's the day Mr Lord decides he needs some new sex slaves, and your daughters just disappear? What about Mr Lord needs some cannon fodder for some hopeless adventure, so he just raids your village, rapes a few women, chains you and your kids, and leads you to inevitable death? That's just Another Day in Feudalism for you.
I usually tend to forget that most of the people here have not read their history, comments like this one remind me of that. I recommend La société féodale [1] by Bloch, or the relevant volume from Histoire de la France rurale [2]
[1] https://www.amazon.com/La-soci%C3%A9t%C3%A9-f%C3%A9odale/dp/...
[2] https://www.editionspoints.com/ouvrage/histoire-de-la-france...
Actually, there are multiple areas in Europe that are now little different from feudal fiefdoms run by drag traffickers(13ème/15ème in Marseille comes to mind) and instead of doing anything about it politicians just pretend they don't exist.
that's a big part of TFA, here's an excerpt:
The Sack of Palermo did not happen because a criminal organization imposed it from the outside though the use of violence. It was, rather, a chosen, planned and enacted project involving most of the Palermo elite of professionals, entrepreneurs and politicians, cheered on by a new middle class looking to climb the social ladder, and accepted by the underclasses in need of jobs and housing.
Cheap affordable housing from a government is absolutely not the same as cheap affordable housing from a criminal organisation.
I'm genuinely curious what the difference is according to you.
From where I'm standing I sometimes struggle to see the difference between my government and a mafia. They behave in uncanny similar ways.
Lest this seems smug, let me say that, with SCOTUS struggling to find anything wrong in the events of January 6 2021, I am not feeling at all smug.
Might want to work on your reading comprehension there.
For me a functional government has the wellbeing of its citizens as a mission. There might be different opinions on how that would look like (hence democracy) but the idea is that; once the government is unchangeable and only cares about maximising the profits of its cadre then it starts becoming more and more like a mafia, just a legalised one.
I'm reading the Black Book of Communism and that's my exact impression of the Bolsheviks.
From Goodfellas: "If we wanted something we just took it. If anyone complained twice they got hit so bad, believe me, they never complained again".
That was the Bolsheviks circa 1920.
Railway stations with no rails going in.