My point about organized crime is that its transactions are much less likely to be recorded, so they don’t go into economists’ calculations. Now that I think about it, the same applies to non-organized crime, but I assume it’s a smaller part of the economy, but really, who knows?
I thought most of organized crime was selling illegal products and services—drugs (not about redistribution of wealth), prostitution (I’ve heard mixed things about the % of slavery), lotteries (I wonder how they’re doing now that there are legal lotteries), and smuggling.
Racketeering’s also a traditional pursuit of organized crime, and one that’s more obviously coercive. In the modern era there’s also electronic theft and fraud to deal with—botnets, trade in stolen identity information, that sort of thing.
I’d agree that drugs, prostitution, and gambling are at least equally prominent no matter what era we’re looking at, though.
My point about organized crime is that its transactions are much less likely to be recorded, so they don’t go into economists’ calculations. Now that I think about it, the same applies to non-organized crime, but I assume it’s a smaller part of the economy, but really, who knows?
In that case what you care about is grey economy which is much bigger than organized crime.
The grey economy is also more important since it actually produces goods while crime activities tend to just redistribute wealth.
I thought most of organized crime was selling illegal products and services—drugs (not about redistribution of wealth), prostitution (I’ve heard mixed things about the % of slavery), lotteries (I wonder how they’re doing now that there are legal lotteries), and smuggling.
Racketeering’s also a traditional pursuit of organized crime, and one that’s more obviously coercive. In the modern era there’s also electronic theft and fraud to deal with—botnets, trade in stolen identity information, that sort of thing.
I’d agree that drugs, prostitution, and gambling are at least equally prominent no matter what era we’re looking at, though.