What's the rational response if the mafia offers to protect you?

If a member of an organized crime family comes to you and says,

pay us and will protect you, what do you say?

Since this is the mafia, you know that what they really mean is pay us or we destroy your business,

home, family, etc. They're offering to protect you from

themselves, really, and I think most of you would nod your head until they left and then call the

police because, hey, they're thugs. And this is 2018, and we don't have to put up with this kind of thing.

But that security is a luxury we didn't always have here in America. Under prohibition, back in the

1920s, less than a

century ago, calling the cops on your neighborhood mafia might have been totally impotent,

utterly suicidal, in fact. And while you listen to this, you might be thinking, well, wow,

how much the world has changed and only a century, but I was just talking about America.

Let's talk about Sicily, that island on the tip of the Italian peninsula from which much of our mafia originated, that Sicily.

In 2010, the New York Times reported that in Sicily's capital city, up to 80% of businesses pay protection money to the mafia.

That's 2010.

Assuming they're making rational decisions, and I assume they are, Sicilian business owners believe it's logical to pay the mob for quote-unquote protection.

The protection racket, or the extortion racket, is not a thing of the past.

It is a tactic that works today in our era under the right circumstances.

In modern America, humans are participating in a friendly version of the protection racket.

We pay taxes and we get police protection.

Fail to pay your taxes and the IRS will come knocking.

We would all choose the IRS over the Sicilian mob every day.

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