
What Organized Crime Pays - mathattack
http://www.vice.com/read/organized-crime-pays-0000477-v21n10?curator=MediaREDEF
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wozniacki
A most excellent film that depicts the realities of lives of various ranks of
mafioso - in this case, the Camorra, a criminal organization based in the
southern Italian region of Campania - is Matteo Garrone's Gomorrah (2008)[1],
based on the eponymous book by Roberto Saviano.

The Camorra bosses swiftly ordered his death and Saviano even contemplated
fleeing Italy, thereafter.

Later he sued the very same crime bosses.[2]

[1]

Here's the Criterion trailer for the film

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwgKIpvLrCs](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwgKIpvLrCs)

[2]

[http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/antimafia-
cam...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/antimafia-campaigner-
roberto-saviano-sues-gangsters-who-ordered-his-death-8406282.html)

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avemg
This article was written by Roberto Saviano.

~~~
wozniacki
Oh. I missed that part.

But don't miss a chance to watch the film. Its on Hulu Plus.

Although its mostly pretty bleak, the film lays bare the impressive reach of
the Camorra.

From waste management to high fashion !

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kriro
There's also a couple of studies, books etc. that have looked into the earning
potential of gang members (it is extremely low).

"Gang Leader for a Day" is a nice read in that regard.

~~~
justincormack
"In Search of Respect" by Philippe Bourgouis is also good - technically an
academic book, but very readable.

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new299
Doesn't seem like a low salary to me. Seems that it's about average for Italy
(
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_countries_by_a...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_countries_by_average_wage)
2610USD versus 2500 they mention in the article). So I'd guess above average
for an entry level position.

I'd somehow guess it's also largely tax free!

~~~
ghshephard
I'm not sure about Italy, but in the United States, you would definitely want
to pay taxes on that income, and, an important part of organized crime (an, as
we saw in Breaking Bad, not so organized crime) is laundering the ill gotten
gains, paying tax on them, such that you can then spend the money without
worrying about the IRS. Because, if there is one thing that scares the Mafia,
it's the IRS. They are ruthless.

~~~
mathattack
Yes - it was the IRS that got Capone, right? (Or at least according to the
movies)

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lotsofmangos
The freakonomic piece on the economics of crack dealing is a good counterpoint
to this, given they found that many people in that line of work were actually
earning less than minimum wage. -
[http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_levitt_analyzes_crack_econom...](http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_levitt_analyzes_crack_economics?language=en)

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BorisMelnik
agree title is misleading. organized crime does not mean italian mafia, which
is what this post is about. the Bratva for instance is structured completely
different, which I won't go into here today. even the Italians in NYC I've met
who are in the family and connected are structured completely differently.
many of these families have moved to completely legit businesses and just keep
the fear factor in place to secure large city / gvt contracts. pay scale is on
a much different scale than this.

not saying the post was inaccurate at all, but it is only describing about 5%
of criminal enterprise.

~~~
Snail_Commando
> "many of these families have moved to completely legit businesses and just
> keep the fear factor in place to secure large city / gvt contracts."

Protip: If your business model relies on "fear factor" you may have failed to
satisfy the "completely legit business" specification.

~~~
teddyh
I agree.

Note that this reasoning can also be applied to what we would think of as
“normal” companies. What does this say about them?

~~~
jaredandrews
The market is not rational?

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_random_
Sounds like an investment firm, but with a bit more vertical mobility :).

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dang
It's an interesting piece written by an authority on the subject, but the
title is so misleading that its negation would be closer to accurate.
Accordingly we replaced it with a representative sentence from the article.
Suggestions for a better title, as always, are welcome.

~~~
Carrok
Umm, what?

> If you worked your way up to become one of the boss’s right-hand men, you
> could get a monthly stipend of $32,000 to $38,000. If you were a vicecapo,
> second-in-command to the boss, you’d receive about $130,000 a month. And
> bosses—well, it’s impossible to even guess how much they can take in.

Sure sounds like 'Organized Crime Pays' is an extremely accurate title.

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slashnull
$i for a Few Important People:wq

~~~
Danieru
You might know this already but ZZ is faster and a bit more reliable method
than :wq

ZZ has the side benefit of never saving out copies into randomly named files.

~~~
slashnull
Also, find . -name "*.swp" -exec rm {} \; is also slowly getting abstracted
away in my mind as a single, atomic and very useful command.

~~~
GregorStocks
You can configure Vim to put the swap files in your ~/.vim instead of the
directory of the file you're editing, which in my experience is much less
annoying - see
[https://github.com/GregorStocks/configs/blob/35ab5c3c45e5cfa...](https://github.com/GregorStocks/configs/blob/35ab5c3c45e5cfa9a380c56431d539ca47ea7e00/.vimrc#L65)

~~~
jqm
I have a directory in /tmp set up for swap files. And indeed, it is much less
annoying than having them in the working directory.

