explicit govt monopoly rent-seeking (law abuse)

[Bill Stewart]

At 01:16 PM 01/05/2002 -0800, Petro wrote:
>On Thursday, January 3, 2002, at 04:01 PM, Michael Motyka wrote:
>>My favorite is the lottery : can't gamble in your own home but they can
>>run a statewide casino - how are they different from the mafia?
>
>         The mafia at least pays lip service to the concept of Honor.

Most state governments also give you a breakdown on the things that
they spend the money on (with usually some weasel-words to avoid
indicating that it's proceeds from scamming suckers.
Usually the establishment of the lottery was justified to the voters
by saying they'd spend the money on schools and old people;
usually the actual spending is mostly for prisons (to keep
druggies and gamblers in) and other disreputable things.

The Mafia, by contrast, explains how they spend their money
by saying "Duh, we're the Mafia, whaddyatink?"
Also, the Mafia doesn't hypocritically claim that they're
forbidding other people to run lotteries because they're immoral;
they may claim that they're doing it because "this is *my* territory".
Of course, both of them let the Catholic Church and Fire Departments
run bingo games.  And at least back when I lived in New Jersey,
we didn't get a state lottery until the Mafia agreed that
it was ok to run it if the payoff was a lot worse than their Daily Number.
(Mafia payoff was 60%; State was usually 50%.)

On the other hand, Teri Gross on NPR was doing an interview with
somebody who'd written a book about the current Philadelphia mob.
Apparently, the concept of honor is long gone, even among the
younger members of the old Italian families.  And not only no honor,
but not really even any style as a substitute. Buncha crude thugs,
got no respect for nobody.