Talk:Protection racket

Neutral Point of View

This article desperately needs a rewrite from someone that's NOT a mob sympathizer Kevin143 20:08, 2 November 2006 (UTC) I started by deleting two paragraphs of crap. Kevin143 20:10, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Someone vandalized this article. "fuck RICO"? How stupid. 68.110.28.39 16:47, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Government

"Some have argued that this is an accurate description of most governments, but used in this way the term would be seen as emotive." - This is a weasel sentence. Amend it, or delete it. Rintrah 07:40, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

I agree. I removed it completely, as I can't even see what useful purpose the sentence would serve if it were amended. --BennyD 07:51, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

The use of the word nation-state in the opening sentence is not helpful. Whilst some radical libertarians no doubt argue that taxation has the properties of a protection racket, an encylopaedia should distinguish between the conventional meaning of the word, and more metaphorical cases used to make strident political points. I will remove this.

See also includes the government and 9/11. Am I one of the few who hasn't recognised the widescale protection racketeering of 'the government' and 9/11 terrorists, or is this getting over-the-top? Rintrah 11:57, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

I think that the qualifier "non-governmental" neatly removes the need to mention the similarities to government at this time but at some point someone should mention that Roman government (the basis of US government?) was essentially based on patronage and protection. Pinjar 22:51, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

You're all a lot of conformist suckups. Government fulfills the description perfectly:

1. It uses force to extort money from citizens in the form of taxation. 2. It claims to use tax money to protect citizens while all too often doing them harm 3. It gets into conflicts with other governments over who has the right to extort a group of people in a given geographical area.

I agree ... certainly the comparison is not totally significant that it the comment should have been removed without a good argument supplied to why those coercive monopolies we know as states don't also qualify as protection rackets where they extort taxes. 69.137.7.171 (talk) 01:48, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

I know it's vogue to blindly support Government while your party is in power, but unquestionably government fits the description provided. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.247.40.238 (talk) 16:57, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

I completely agree with the above user, there should at least be a paragraph dedicated to this view point. Obviously, there isn't total agreement on the definition, and to clear the article of an mention of this point is censorship.Zaphar (talk) 01:19, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

Question

"The bad reputation gained by organised crime also stems from the tragic incidence of civilian casualties during "mob wars". This reputation was a catalyst for rebellious attitudes that arose in the late fifties and early sixties, wherein the new generation of organised crime rejected the age-old tradition of the council."

Organized crime has a bad reputation, does it? Anyway, what does this have to do with the subject? MrBlondNYC 22:32, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Disambiguation

The term has been expanded by feminists to refer to men who 'rescue' women by insisting on protecting them from dangerous strangers when it is actually the so-called protector who will turn on the woman who rejects his protection and deprives him of his excuse for violence. Ellen Goodman noted (4/14/06) that this analogy can be extended to the current U.S. executive, where preemptive violence provokes blowback that tends to affect women and children most.

This paragraph is not enlightening to someone trying to understand the concept of 'protection racket'. It seems to have been suspiciously added to serve the contributor's agenda. Rintrah 05:16, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree, suggest moving the feminist reference as a disambiguation Fremantle74 14:53, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

The Mob never uses extortion???

I find it very hard to believe that the Mob never does a little shake-down, or even lets freelance criminals operate in its territory.

References, anyone?

The article could do with a few references. The party can't keep going on without referential supervision sometime. Rintrah 03:25, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

merge with Racket (crime)?

Maybe this stub would be better off as a section in Racket (crime)? I dorftrottel I talk I 05:07, December 11, 2007

that does not seem like a good idea to me. 74.68.152.245 (talk) 01:26, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose - Protection rackets have particular dynamics that are worthy of study in their own right. Daask (talk) 18:26, 1 June 2018 (UTC)

Pimping is a protection racket

"Pimps" operate a type of protection racket. I tried to add "Pimp" to the list at the bottom of the article, but a cluebot undid my change [1] and the cluebot was not available for me to report the false positive 517846 to... Somebody else will need to make this change I guess.74.68.152.245 (talk) 01:26, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Unethical edits are happening here.

I would like to know why material which was accompanied by perfectly adequate citations was removed without explanation. Where's the referee? This is a foul. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.10.62.11 (talk) 02:11, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

235 Patents

Would Microsoft's behaviour over alleged IP infringement within GNU software count, and does it deserve a paragraph? I'm thinking of the "well we're not going to tell you exactly what the violations are, and we could sue people.. and we may sue people.. but we'll make you an offer it would be ill advised to refuse" aspect here. 213.48.114.43 (talk) 05:46, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

And for that matter, isn't car insurance the exact definition of "protection racket"? lol. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.185.250.92 (talk) 09:30, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Additional good example of a “popular” protection racket: Copyright.

We should add a section explaining how a protection racket works in practice by showing how copyright is used by organized crime (like RIAA/MPAA/BSAA):

1. They offer a valuable service of creating popular software/music/movies.
2. Then instead of taking the money for it that they want, they make a billion free copies, and offer them to victims for ridiculously cheap compared to the work it was, but still expensive enough to be not worth it for most people.
3. Since it’s just information, anyone can pass it on at will.
4. Now they go on a scavenge hunt for people who got a copy and didn’t “pay”.
5. They write a threatening “official”-looking letter saying that you have to pay $hundredTimesTheWorthOfMoney, or else they would sue you for $mindBogginlyRidiculouslyExpensiveSumOfMoney.
6. Victims, being badly informed about information physics, believe their lies
   • about “ownership” of something that is physically impossible to own, and
   • about that they really don’t want to go to court since the lies would fall apart there unless they buy the judge (like the PirateBay case).
   They don’t know that of the hand full of cases that ever got to a court, only two ever came through, and in both cases because the judge was one of their members and because they lowered the amount of money from more than there is in the entire world (seriously! they wanted something like 2 *Trillion* for a couple of songs) to a still crazy but barely acceptable amount.
7. The victims choose to settle it out of court by paying the protection money.

This is quickly becoming the main income of those tiny tiny but politically powerful “industries”. And since the government is made up out of just as uninformed people, they bought into the lies too.

­­— 188.100.105.41 (talk) 10:58, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

Racketeers not necessarily criminals?

It is written: "Protection racketeers are not necessarily criminals."

A racketeer is "one who obtains money by an illegal enterprise usu. involving intimidation" (Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary) and a crime is "an action or omission which constitutes an offence and is punishable by law" (Oxford English Dictionary) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.182.137.181 (talk) 14:16, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

Protection vs. extortion racket

Protection rackets should not be confused with extortion rackets. Although in many cases protection racketeers will force customers to buy protection, they will genuinely protect the customers from predators and rogues. In an extortion racket, the extortionists will provide no protection (except from themselves). Cases of extortion or incompetent protection tend to be reported more often to the police than protection contracts that are dutifully fulfilled, which often creates the flawed perception that the criminal gangs in question are primarily extortionists.

This is sorely in need of a citation. I've never heard of this distinction, and the idea of the sort of "protection racket" described disagrees with WP's definition of racket: "A racket is a service that is fraudulently offered to solve a problem, such as for a problem that does not actually exist, will not be affected, or would not otherwise exist." And the last sentence seems like it was written by a Mafia PR rep.

The distinction comes from Diego Gambetta's book, The Sicilian Mafia: The Business of Private Protection. Admittedly, he doesn't use the word "racket" very much, but he does insist that the Mafia does provide genuine protection to its customers. It rarely practices extortion on them.Kurzon (talk) 12:29, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

That is nonsense, I'm sorry. First, that citation is hardly credible on its own, please supply the exact quote from him. Further, this is a fundamental form of extortion---the "protection racket" is and always has been "pretend" protection from a threat that only exists because of organized crime as a whole in the first place. Extortion by itself is not limited to protection. Protection Rackets are limited to this pretend protection. One stray citation from an ex-mobster is not enough. Further, the definition of Protection Racket is one under the purview of Law Enforcement and Historians. Not the mob itself.𝓦𝓲𝓴𝓲𝓹𝓮𝓭𝓲𝓪𝓘𝓼𝓝𝓸𝓽𝓟𝓮𝓮𝓻𝓡𝓮𝓿𝓲𝓮𝔀𝓮𝓭-𝓟𝓮𝓮𝓻𝓡𝓮𝓿𝓲𝓮𝔀𝓮𝓭𝓜𝓮𝓪𝓷𝓼𝓡𝓮𝓿𝓲𝓮𝔀𝓮𝓭𝓑𝔂𝓟𝓮𝓮𝓻𝓼𝓞𝓷𝓵𝔂 (talk) 16:20, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

Is he the only source for that? 72.200.151.13 (talk) 18:36, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

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