
Causes and consequences of the Sicilian Mafia - wallflower
https://voxeu.org/article/causes-and-consequences-sicilian-mafia
======
btown
For those interested in the subject, Roberto Saviano's _Gomorrah_ is a
fascinating non-fiction account about the lesser-known but incredibly powerful
Naples mafia, the Camorra. Among other industries, it has inserted itself at
the center of the luxury fashion industry, with a fascinating hold on the same
factories that produce attire and accessories for the red carpet.

[https://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/jan/12/crime.mafia](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/jan/12/crime.mafia)

> The Neapolitan Camorra, or "the System" as it is known by those on its
> inside, is a vast, pullulating world of gangs. They form, split, descend
> into vicious feuds, and re-emerge in new alliances only to be annihilated in
> some new internecine war. Whereas a Sicilian capo can confidently expect to
> see his grandchildren set out on their criminal careers, a senior camorrista
> is lucky if he reaches 40... Following a series of highly credible death
> threats, since autumn 2006 Saviano has been given an armed escort at public
> expense.

[https://www.esquire.com/style/news/a50424/italy-mafia-
counte...](https://www.esquire.com/style/news/a50424/italy-mafia-counterfeit-
fashion-supreme/)

> Quoting Italian journalist Roberto Saviano from his 2006 book Gomorrah:
> Italy's Other Mafia, the article points out that: The workforce in clan
> operations is highly skilled, with decades of experience under Italy's and
> Europe's most important designers. The same hands that once worked under the
> table for the big labels now work for the clans…Which means that the clothes
> made by the clans aren't typical counterfeit goods…but rather a sort of true
> fake. All that's missing is the final step: the brand name, the official
> authorization from the motherhouse.

> Basically how it works in Italy is that multiple factories would bid on a
> job to produce clothes or accessories for a fashion brand. The brand would
> then supply fabrics and designs to each of the factories, and whichever one
> supplied the garments fastest and with the highest quality would be paid.
> Those factories that didn't win the bid would then re-brand the clothes and
> sell them through the Camorra's retail network. It's part of the reason why
> today, nearly 10 percent of all fashion related-products sold in Europe are
> counterfeit.

The book itself is a shocking read - highly recommended.

~~~
pimeys
It's an excellent book. I was visiting Naples after reading the book, and I
truly love the city, food and the people. The problem is, how my Neapolitan
friends say, that visiting the city is safe and lovely, but living there maybe
not.

I remember from the book how Camorra controls most of Europe's drug
trafficking, how they test the new stuff with junkies in Scampia and only
spread them to the north if the junkies don't die. For German/English party-
goers to consume.

Or how they just basically dump toxic waste to the nature, spoiling one of the
best kitchens in the world. How would you know the buffala mozzarella is not
contaminated, or the delicious tomatoes...

~~~
atmosx
Any hints on what one must see? I might go to Naples for a Sting concert in
August and I'm trying to make a list of the most interesting sight-scenes?

~~~
et-al
Surprised you're downvoted, but perhaps it's tangental to the discussion. It's
also the weekend, so eh.. :)

My personal biggest takeaway from Naples was a question of what happened
between Italy and America that the food lost something. This is probably true
of all cuisines that migrate to new countries and don't have access to their
original ingredients. After Naples and Amalfi, I became that annoying friend
that comes back from Italy and raves about how great the food was over there.

In terms of sightseeing, the things I still remember a few years later:

\- Madre is a great contemporary art museum there and they were featuring lots
of Italian artists when we went

\- We really enjoyed the Piazza Bellini neighborhood both during the day at
night. There's an art school there and it just has a really good vibe. At
night it's also a popular spot.

\- We did two underground tours of their cisterns. The one that meets in front
of Caffè Gambrinus [0] feels more grassroots (like a couple folks who do this
as a weekend hobby) and hopefully your group will only have 2-6 people. The
larger one is at Via dei Tribunali. This one has a more corporate feel as tour
guides are seasonal staff that know how to speak English. The sights are more
stunning here, though.

\- We rode the funicular up to Vomero in the west which is a wealthier
neighborhood, hung out in the park there, then climbed up to Castel Sant'Elmo.
Poked around its lovely courtyards and art collection, and walked down the
backside while enjoying the view

\- Pizza. Pizza. Pizza. Lots of blogs have written about this. Get there
early, otherwise don't go at all because you'll waste half your day waiting.

Lastly, you're in the middle of _everything_. Mount Vesuvius and Pompeii are
right there. Or take a ferry to Sorrento and explore the Amalfi Coast. The
only thing is that it's super popular in the summer, so you'll need take in
consideration dealing with the other tourists and higher prices.

[0] Gambrinus -
[http://www.lanapolisotterranea.it/orari_ing.htm](http://www.lanapolisotterranea.it/orari_ing.htm)

------
fungusAmongUs

      appears to have significantly reduced literacy, 
      increased infant mortality, limited the provision 
      of a variety of local public goods, and may also 
      have significantly reduced local political competition
    

I believe it, and I'll tell you why.

If you look at your typical in-group microcosm, a leader often refuses to
accept the leadership of others. This promotes that individual to their own
level of incompetance, so to speak. Leaders usually attract people less
capable than themselves, and extremely domineering personalities enjoy lording
over people they perceive as their lessers. I've watched this concept cut
across tons of low-level menial jobs and up into higher level executive
cliques.

Meanwhile, violence as an action to produce an effect has differing effects at
the scale of a populace in which strangers co-exist, than within the
individual microcosm. Alternatives to violence might include exile, which for
the social group has an effective outcome that matches crippling injury,
murder or jail. An individual is removed from the game. Clashes in leadership
are at the core of violence. But violence is unsophisticated, and it's usually
not your geniuses resorting to it reflexively.

For an extreme example of the sustained effect of violence removing
participants from a society, look at Afghanistan, which has been dealing with
violence as a fact of life since the 80's. Brain drain, orphans everywhere, no
parents, no one going to school, because learning to survive at all is the
only education that pays off.

On a gradient, the premise of continued violence between strangers in a small
town scales similarly, and all the worse if every town in a region is dealing
with the same shit. The less time anyone has to sit and think about some
trivial diversion, the dumber society is on a whole, and the less everyone
gets back from the benefits of permitting others to sit and think, in return.

------
noir-york
From the article: "The historical record shows many instances in which the
Mafia fought against the Peasant Fasci and collaborated with the military in
suppressing protests and killing protesters."

However, according to Wikipedia: "Some historians emphasize that the leagues
were engaged in class struggle against a coalition of landowners and mafiosi
and ignore evidence of strategic alliances between the Fasci and the Mafia."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fasci_Siciliani#Mafia_involvem...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fasci_Siciliani#Mafia_involvement)

I wonder which is it. Perhaps the Mafia was opportunistic and would ally with
the Fasci (the workers) or the landowners depending on the local conditions.
Its not like the Mafia is one single entity but composed of smaller
(themselves warring) factions.

~~~
fjsolwmv
There are 3 sides to every story. In the US the mafia "supports" the workers
but violeny hijacks unions for it's own profit.

The "Fasci" "workers" became the Fascist government that went on a murderous
rampage across Europe

~~~
pizza
> _Not to be confused with Fascio._

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fasci_Siciliani](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fasci_Siciliani)

------
cromano
Fun fact: the Sicilian mafia's annual revenue is comparable to that of Amazon.
[https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/01/22/the-women-
who-...](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/01/22/the-women-who-took-on-
the-mafia)

~~~
make3
they don't exactly file tax returns, I wonder how it's calculated

~~~
virtu0so
From a high enough vantage point, I'm willing to bet there's a gaping hole
that economists can clearly discern, that a calculable quantity of money just
"falls into" somehow, and that there's a corresponding class of citizens that
are curiously plump, and their feet don't seem to touch the ground, even
though they aren't particularly well known, and don't seem to have lucrative
careers.

If you took all the public data, and tried to trace all the economic output,
as it fell into the pockets of individuals, and tried to follow the spending
patterns of individuals, tracing the return path acting as inputs to fund all
the legal businesses out there, you probably can quickly notice a gap too
large to chalk up to inefficient friction and people hiding money under their
mattresses, and it probably looks more like a willful diverting of funds to
parts unknown.

By induction and intuition you might hazard a guess about the story behind
such phenomena.

------
cperciva
This desperately needs a regression analysis. They've determined that the
presence of the Sicilian Mafia is strongly correlated with the presence of the
Peasant Fasci, and also strongly correlated with a decline in literacy and
increase in infant mortality.

They immediately jump to "the Mafia causes a decline in literacy" without even
considering that the _Peasant Fasci_ might have been responsible for said
decline in literacy.

How the hell did this get published?

~~~
virtu0so
The correlation with "infant mortality" is a subtle nod to prostitution, rape
and abortion.

Dead babies come from accidental or unwanted pregnancies, particularly when
combined with drugs and alcohol.

If the underground black market has a strong supply of prostitution (and not
just human traffic sob stories, but also prostitution as party time and
consenting my-vagina-my-choice power plays, aka: porn without the camera) and
the johns are kept in line with strong arm tactics, you get a lot of ladies
offering services, and a cross section of pregnancies that represent a poor
business decision.

Charting an uptick in dead babies and unattended children running around is a
bellweather for women doing whatever, and having whatever done to them, in
larger quantities. Really large quantities, over a sustained span of time
looks more like big business producing unsavory norms, the kind associated
with vice.

In the periphery of legal pornography production there's a quantity of
abortions that, in the early 20th century would have cropped up as
"infanticide" and "infant mortality" for lack of better terms.

Low literacy rate is a measure of the unwanted pregnancies that lived. Kids
that have parents that don't care about them won't bother with compulsory
education when they approach ten years old, and dealing with other students
starts to become truly unpleasant. Individuals may obtain pragmatic reading
skills, but creative writing and reading for fun would decline right along
with an uptick in other adversities.

------
agumonkey
Note that mafia also spilled its influence up north, to south france,
Marseille and Lyon. These guys apparently initiated a lot of dark ops of the
day, that reached common practices in national governments (cutely named
security forces). Mafiosi also imported drugs from northern africa to
distribute over large cities suburbs. And lastly, it seems the CIA enjoyed
their support for intelligence (french connection). My memories are blurry, so
I may have listed twisted facts, but there are documentaries about the matter.

~~~
icegreentea2
Your comment intrigued me so I went on some quick reading.

Worth pointing out that the group at play in Southern France seemed to be
predominantly Corsican - though not to say that Scilians or the Scilian Mafia
were not involved.

~~~
sorokod
Not a documentary but very good nevertheless:

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Prophet](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Prophet)

------
xrd
Another fantastic book on the subject: Excellent Cadavers. Amazing story of
the rise of the fascists and their transformation into the modern day Mafia.
And the infiltration into the highest levels of the Italian government is
riveting and telling about all governments.

------
lkrubner
On a related note, I'd like to strongly recommend the book "The Moral Basis of
a Backward Society"

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Moral_Basis_of_a_Backward_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Moral_Basis_of_a_Backward_Society)

From Wikipedia:

The Moral Basis of a Backward Society is a book by Edward C. Banfield, a
political scientist who visited Montegrano, Italy (Montegrano is the
fictitious name used by Banfield to protect the original town of Chiaromonte,
in the Southern Italian region of Basilicata) in 1955. He observed a self-
interested, family centric society which sacrificed the public good for the
sake of nepotism and the immediate family. Banfield as an American was
witnessing what was to become infamous as the "Mafia" or families (in Sicily
and other parts of Southern Italy) that cared only for its own "members" at
the expense of their fellow citizens. Banfield postulated that the
backwardness of such a society could be explained "largely but not entirely"
by "the inability of the villagers to act together for their common good or,
indeed, for any end transcending the immediate, material interest of the
nuclear family".

------
nateburke
Great article! It's really fascinating to see data indicate correlation
between a weak centralized government and generally bad outcomes (higher
infant mortality, lower literacy rates).

------
skqr
Socialist threat? Peasent demands? Right... Are we maiybe missing the forest
for the trees? The cause of the peasents plight is to be blamed, not the fact
that the poor landowners couldn't turn to the state to repress them. Geez.

