Tag Archives: Government as organized crime

The Mafia contra the Other Mafia, from Eric Peters

As I said in Everything I Know About Business I Learned From The Godfather, the government is Il Capo dei Capi (the Boss of Bosses). Eric Peters has the same take at ericpetersautos.com:

I have been reading Sammy “The Bull” Gravano’s book, Underboss.

Gravano was just that – underboss – second-in-command of the Gambino “family” of Cosa Nostra, also known as the mafia; also known as organized crime.

As distinct from legalized crime.

He worked for John Gotti, the “Dapper Don,” who was boss of the Gambino family back in New York, back in the ’80s. Gravano ended up turning on his boss – who (according to Sammy) had turned on him, first. Both ended up in prison.

But that’s not the real story of the book.

The real story is the parallelism of syndicates. Of organized vs. legalized crime.  Sammy was a “made member” of organized crime. He had to earn the approbation of already-made members, in order to be “made” – as by showing he could get the job done. And he did, which he describes at length in the book.

You get into legalized crime by getting elected – or appointed.

This is the source of the delusion that legalized crime isn’t the same thing as organized crime. Which is how – and why – it becomes a much worse thing. A demented and for that reason a much-more-dangerous thing. A politician or bureaucrat imagines himself to be a “public servant,” which is an interesting inversion given that servants are servile. They can be commanded – and are expected to obey – while “public servants” do the commanding and when not obeyed, have the legal power to punish those they “serve.”

These “public servants” also believe they “serve” by right – and that it is our obligation to obey (and hand over however much of our money they say). That it is . . . criminal to disobey them.

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The United States Government is a Criminal Racket Writ Large, by Gary D. Barnett

I made the same point—the government is a criminal racket—in my latest book, devoted a whole chapter to it as a matter of fact, but it’s a point the bears repeating for those poor souls who have yet to realize what government is all about. From Gary D. Barnett at lewrockwell.com:

A certain type of person strives to become a master over all, and to extend his force, his will to power, and to subdue all that resists it. But he encounters the power of others, and comes to an arrangement, a union, with those that are like him: thus they work together to serve the will to power. And the process goes on. 

~ Friedrich Nietzsche

The political class is made up of those that seek to gain power over others due to either an attitude of superiority, an inflated ego, a desire to advance a personal agenda, or a misplaced concern for the wretched majority that they believe through power can be molded to their way of thinking. These political types are of many stripes, but among them rest an evil core, that group that will go to any lengths to not only gain power and control over others, but to keep it at any cost. Politicians of this ilk are the most self-serving of all.

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