The Mob, no the Real Mob.

[Doktor Howl]

Lol@ yakuza megaphones.

... but seriously, I never thought I'd see this board laud organized crime.

Why not?

Though I have to say that the OP is looking through some very heavy filters.

I guess I always imagined that organized crime would be brought up in the context of an example of free enterprise in an argument against libertarianism.

It's just business, the American Way™.  Which are the bigger gangsters?  Some collection of mooks in New York, or the Pentagon?

And, while I feel that Libertarians are silly, that doesn't mean that business doesn't work, in the sense that it feeds itself and grows (as opposed to "benefiting the public).

This. And the fact that the mob was localized, you know, in their neighborhood and shit.

Yep.  And that leads to turf wars with the neighboring mobsters, and bullets flying around labelled "to whom it may concern".  That happened all the time with Mob 1.0.

[eighteen buddha strike]

Lol@ yakuza megaphones.

... but seriously, I never thought I'd see this board laud organized crime.

Why not?

Though I have to say that the OP is looking through some very heavy filters.

I guess I always imagined that organized crime would be brought up in the context of an example of free enterprise in an argument against libertarianism.

It's just business, the American Way™.  Which are the bigger gangsters?  Some collection of mooks in New York, or the Pentagon?

And, while I feel that Libertarians are silly, that doesn't mean that business doesn't work, in the sense that it feeds itself and grows (as opposed to "benefiting the public).

Exactly my point.

This. And the fact that the mob was localized, you know, in their neighborhood and shit.

Independent localized cells maybe, but international in its scope. More like a multi-national chain than a mom & pop store.

[Cain]

The American Mafia used to have a "board of directors" who would meet frequently in New York and coordinate activities nationwide.

And, as always, the Italian mafia are two steps ahead.  The Comorra have branches all over Europe and into South America and even the Middle East.  One of their favourite activities for their internationally inclined groups is people, arm and organ smuggling.

[Adios]

Damn. Organs? Ugh, that is sick.

[Faust]

They are responsible for most of the slavery in the western world, they are worse then the random violence guns flaring crowd, at least I know most drugged up street gangs aren't running the child sex trade.

[Doktor Howl]

They are responsible for most of the slavery in the western world, they are worse then the random violence guns flaring crowd, at least I know most drugged up street gangs aren't running the child sex trade.

Of course, there's always the point that the mob does and always has recruited from street gangs.

In fact, the New York mob was basically formed by John Torrio out of the infamous 5 points gang.

[Cain]

They are responsible for most of the slavery in the western world, they are worse then the random violence guns flaring crowd, at least I know most drugged up street gangs aren't running the child sex trade.

Although, as I quoted down in TFY,S, it seems that the police are running the child porn trade.  But yeah.  Brian Freemantle wrote an interesting book about organized crime in Europe called "The Octopus", which had chapters on both organ harvesting and the sex-slave trade.

[Faust]

They are responsible for most of the slavery in the western world, they are worse then the random violence guns flaring crowd, at least I know most drugged up street gangs aren't running the child sex trade.

Although, as I quoted down in TFY,S, it seems that the police are running the child porn trade.  But yeah.  Brian Freemantle wrote an interesting book about organized crime in Europe called "The Octopus", which had chapters on both organ harvesting and the sex-slave trade.

This I didn't know, yikes.

[Cain]

From Judith Levine's Harmful to Minors, page 37

Attorney Lawrence Stanley, who published in the Benjamin A. Cardozo Law Review what is widely considered the most thorough research of child pornography in the 1980s, concluded that the pornographers were almost exclusively cops. In 1990 at a southern California police seminar, the LAPD's R. P. "Toby" Tyler proudly announced as much. The government had shellacked the competition, he said; now law enforcement agencies were the sole reproducers and distributors of child pornography. Virtually all advertising, distribution, and sales to people considered potential lawbreakers were done by the federal government, in sting operations against people who have demonstrated (through, for instance, membership in NAMBLA) what agents regard as predisposition to commit a crime. These solicitations were numerous and did not cease until the recipient took the bait. "In other words, there was no crime until the government seduced people into committing one," Stanley wrote.

If, as police claim, looking at child porn inspires molesters to go out and seduce living children, why were the feds doing the equivalent of distributing matches to arsonists? Their answer is: to stop the molesters before they strike again. Newspaper reports of arrests uniformly follow the same pattern: a federal agent poses as a minor online, hints at a desired meeting or agrees to one should the mark suggest it, and then arrests the would-be molester when he shows up. But another logical answer to the almost exclusive use of stings to arrest would-be criminals is that the government, frustrated with the paucity of the crime they claim is epidemic and around which huge networks of enforcement operations have been built, have to stir the action to justify their jobs.