How Bad can the Mafia/Organized Crime Situation Get?

The Depression era was the time of the greatest crime wave the nation ever saw. Mafia and assorted gangs and criminal families and empires took over the cities and the streets of America, and bank robbers roamed the Midwest. That gave rise to the FBI, major crackdowns on crime and crime bosses, and the repeal of Prohibition to cut the power out from under the criminals.
However, that wasn't the end of organized crime. It persisted, and found special strength in the West, and in its prize desert jewel of Las Vegas. Hoover and the FBI under him continued to deny its existence, which only allowed it to grow and prosper, and it was not until after his death that things started to get done as much as they should have been years before.
Even today, after mob bosses like Gotti have been arrested, crime rings shut down, soldiers arrested and ratting out their bosses and capos, organized crime still exists. And we continue to be fascinated by it.

That leads me to this question: just how bad can the mafia and organized crime get in the United States? I don't mean that as how violent it can get, but how pervasive and strong and encompassing can it get? There are quite a few nations which have problems of this nature with organized crime. Certainly under developed nations whose governments are already corrupt. Russia has a major organized crime issue. I believe Italy does as well, and I have heard Japan does too. How bad can it get in the United States?
 
I believe that organized crime arises to fill two niches in society, for lack of a better term. One, organized crime can operate "protection" rackets to fill a perceived (by their own astroturfing) lack of police protection from real criminals and an actual lack of police protection against the protection rackets. The second niche is far worse and that is providing goods and services to the people that the government has decided are bad, or dangerous, or things that just happen to be in short supply.

When the government bans something that people want and that people accept having (drugs, prostitutes, gambling, alcohol during Prohibition), people are going to get those things. The mob is just American capitalism at its finest. They provide a service or a good that people wants and they ruthlessly exploit their market advantages to kill off their competition. My own left-wing response to that is to end moral prohibitions. Licensed, regulated, and taxed prostitution and drug sales will gut the mob's business when coupled with simple advertising: "Go to the Legal Drug Store on the corner instead of that creepy guy behind 7-11. Everything's safer and you're buying American. If you want a prostitute, go to the Legal Brothel in the Red Light District. Every dollar funneled to her helps keep young girls from being exploited."

Now to answer the original question, to make things worse you need to have more things that the mob can work with. If Nevada and New Jersey had no legal gambling, I could easily see underground casinos growing and enriching their mob bosses as at least a portion of those who would go to Vegas or AC legally turn to the Don's Casino. Coupled this with extended or never ending Prohibition and the mob can get very big.

Or, for a more dystopian version, the Tea Party gets its way and bans the government and everything that is fun under the sun. In the absence of legal ways to entertain yourself, I can see the mob expanding. Heck, I could even see the mob running front businesses providing what used to be government services and treating competing private entities the same way they treat all of their competitors.
 
Now to answer the original question, to make things worse you need to have more things that the mob can work with. If Nevada and New Jersey had no legal gambling, I could easily see underground casinos growing and enriching their mob bosses as at least a portion of those who would go to Vegas or AC legally turn to the Don's Casino. Coupled this with extended or never ending Prohibition and the mob can get very big.

Or, for a more dystopian version, the Tea Party gets its way and bans the government and everything that is fun under the sun. In the absence of legal ways to entertain yourself, I can see the mob expanding. Heck, I could even see the mob running front businesses providing what used to be government services and treating competing private entities the same way they treat all of their competitors.

The mafia can also flourish in legal areas as well, at least when those areas are legal only in certain oasis' of vice and illegal elsewhere. That's why Las Vegas was so big for the mafia. The mafia managed to get gambling bans repealed in Nevada and created Vegas and Reno and all those places, but Las Vegas especially. And so mobsters could leave the east, head west and go somewhat legitimate in the gambling business which was extremely lucrative. And they could handle matters their own way, so if their entertainers had an issue or if someone was stealing or cheating at the tables, they could break a few bones and bury a few bodies if need be. It was said that Vegas had two police forces, the cops and "the boys" and if the cops couldn't resolve it you went to the boys and they resolved it. And if they wanted to get into still illegal areas, like prostitution, they could. The mafia also flourished in Cuba for that reason.
Organized crime seems to do very well in sort of city-states where they're free to operate however they want, even more so than if you forced it totally underground everywhere. It seems like just amount of regulation without regulation where it allows crime to blossom and be somewhat
legitimate crime rather than making crime of that nature go away were it totally legal and open. It may also just be the fact of organized crime existing already and transferring into a place where it can make money, regardless of legality or illegality, and carrying with it all the factors of organized crime.

I think organized crime expands on two factors: one is exploiting illegal areas by providing those things that are illegal and offering them to people who want them, two is corrupting the governments so that they're free to operate because they've bought politicians or their people are the politicians, or they've made the politicians too afraid to go after them. The American government doesn't seem like it's had that latter part. Local governments have, and city governments have, but the American government never seems to have (unless you buy that J Edgar was in bed with the mob or that Nixon or Kennedy was).
 
I believe that organized crime arises to fill two niches in society, for lack of a better term. One, organized crime can operate "protection" rackets to fill a perceived (by their own astroturfing) lack of police protection from real criminals and an actual lack of police protection against the protection rackets. The second niche is far worse and that is providing goods and services to the people that the government has decided are bad, or dangerous, or things that just happen to be in short supply.

When the government bans something that people want and that people accept having (drugs, prostitutes, gambling, alcohol during Prohibition), people are going to get those things. The mob is just American capitalism at its finest. They provide a service or a good that people wants and they ruthlessly exploit their market advantages to kill off their competition. My own left-wing response to that is to end moral prohibitions. Licensed, regulated, and taxed prostitution and drug sales will gut the mob's business when coupled with simple advertising: "Go to the Legal Drug Store on the corner instead of that creepy guy behind 7-11. Everything's safer and you're buying American. If you want a prostitute, go to the Legal Brothel in the Red Light District. Every dollar funneled to her helps keep young girls from being exploited."

Now to answer the original question, to make things worse you need to have more things that the mob can work with. If Nevada and New Jersey had no legal gambling, I could easily see underground casinos growing and enriching their mob bosses as at least a portion of those who would go to Vegas or AC legally turn to the Don's Casino. Coupled this with extended or never ending Prohibition and the mob can get very big.

Or, for a more dystopian version, the Tea Party gets its way and bans the government and everything that is fun under the sun. In the absence of legal ways to entertain yourself, I can see the mob expanding. Heck, I could even see the mob running front businesses providing what used to be government services and treating competing private entities the same way they treat all of their competitors.

Please don't troll.
 
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