
Incompetence as a Signalling Device - bd
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/mclemee/mclemee256
======
asdlfj2sd33
_"An unexpected result of my research on the mafia," he writes, "was to find
out that mafiosi are quite incompetent at doing anything" other than shaking
down legitimate businesses and enforcing trade agreements among smaller-scale
hoodlums. "Mafiosi are good at intimidation and stick to it.... They let the
professionals and the entrepreneurs take care of the actual business
operations."

Rather than getting involved in running a restaurant or dealing drugs, they
joke about their cluelessness in such matters and simply collect payment for
"protection."_

I came to the US as an immigrant and applied for asylum. At one of my INS
interviews I was recounting a story of government corruption and organized
crime when the INS agent took issue with my story.

"That's not how the mafia operates!" He said, "They don't just collect fees,
they take over the business! The protection racket is how it starts but it
quickly progresses to where they wrestle control from the owner and then they
own the business. That's how the mafia always operates!"

This left me quite stunned and speechless, I did not know how to respond, do I
tell him that The Soprano's is not a documentary. Do I try to reason with
extremely impatient person.

Low story short, I won in the green-card lottery, pure luck.

~~~
mahmud
Please ignore the ignorance of American security, intelligence and law
enforcement agencies. I was arrested and held captive for several days, on
several occasions, for no reason at all, other than carrying tens of Arabic
books, on various subjects, in my car. I couldn't convince the post-911
officer that Arabic was a legitimate language, beautiful on its own, with some
passionate scholars. I was translating a mathematics text at the time and had
no working scientific _vocabulary_ of the field, so I had to buy every text on
physics, engineering, chemistry, econometrics and civil engineering I could
find. It takes one months to acquire the technical language for a discipline,
the Right Thing for a scientific translator is to immerse himself in the field
and find all the idioms, metaphors and the cultural signals of the language
community. It was impossible for me to convince him that I really was using
the texts on Stereochemistry for their topological vocabulary, and not for the
chemistry; I told him the real danger was from someone with _materials_ , not
theories, and he jumped on me for _knowing_ who the risk was!

What icing on the cake was when he found out I was doing this for free,
HAHAHA.

------
ggchappell
This is a fascinating article. Since it's a book review, the author isn't
really taking any responsibility for the information presented. I find myself
wondering how much of this is actually true.

~~~
anigbrowl
Seconded. although it examines criminology, there are interesting isomorphisms
with law, management and politics which cynics might regard as simply more
mannered versions of the protection racket. Reminds me of this economist
article on how the political class draws upon distinctly different pools of
professional talent in different cultures:
[http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cf...](http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13496638)

------
yters
Now I get why academics is so frowned upon in school.

~~~
sketerpot
Find other people in school who enjoy learning, and you need not be frowned
upon. In my experience, anyway.

