Organized crime exists at all levels of all societies. From retail crime to finance, it’s part of the furniture. In 2009, the UN estimated “revenue” from organized crime at $870 billion.
A more recent estimate is $4 trillion dollars. From those numbers, you can see nobody’s too sure. That figure is more than double the world’s military budgets.
This isn’t about drugs or bozos with guns; It’s about money. At a time when prices are literally killing people, homelessness is rampant, and global crises are piling up, these guys are doing fine. They’re richer than ever while everyone else goes broke.
There’s a lot of well-known modern history in this situation. If you read Roberto Saviano’s Gomorrah, you’ll get a snapshot of the reach and range of organized crime and how it works. If you read Joe Pistone’s Donnie Brasco, you’ll get a picture of the realities of daily life for organized criminals. There’s not a lot of glamor; it’s more like a day job with added risks.
A lot of people know a lot about organized crime while it’s happening, too. It’s embedded in some places like an old bullet. I remember watching a video about New York on YouTube when someone said, “… that’s the old Mafia torture house” like it was the weather. How would you have known it was a torture house? What did you do about it? Apparently, nothing.
The main issue here is that “well-known” is a bit of an understatement. One of the reasons “true crime” is a major genre in media is because the facts keep coming out. They come out almost monotonously. The famous code of silence apparently doesn’t apply when there’s a buck to be made. Information is collateral, it just depends on how you use it.
There are probably a lot of organized criminals around the world with information that is worth a fortune. That information just hasn’t come out yet. It will because it always does.
It could be information about finance, companies, famous individuals, whatever. It would also be good for blackmail, another “well-known” area of operations. You know all those scandals that happened years before they got any publicity? Something like that.
Crime is basically a social hierarchy. There are the real big shots and the rest. Typically, the big shots are the big money guys in finance, media, and other high-turnover big capital environments.
The guys at the bottom are old-style street gang bangers. There are plenty of them. Meanwhile, back in the happy streets, those lower levels of organized crime are busy making life a misery for anyone around.
According to the FBI, there are 33,000 active gangs in the US with about 1.4 million members. Add to this the large numbers of hangers-on in any criminal environment, and you get the picture. Those numbers mean the gangs literally are “everywhere”. I heard a guy at Pine Ridge reservation say they’re even setting up shop in places like that.
Organized crime exists to make money, not movies. How much money could 1.4 million gangsters turn over in a day? That’s the extent of the problem in the US alone. International organized crime is huge. It’s often an “unofficial” arm of some governments for “unofficial” operations. That’s one reason why so many countries have a big problem with crime and do nothing about it. Worldwide, it’s estimated that 83% of people live in countries impacted by organized crime.
Even more inspiring is the information available about organized crime and politics at all levels. This vast largely unused mass of uncoordinated information is a virtual Google unto itself. The net takeaway is that organized crime runs governments through candidates, elected officials, etc.
Add to this that any donation system, like a Super PAC, is a good place to launder money. It’s almost entirely untraceable. You can put it in and give it back to your little friends and use it to pay your pet politicians with some pretty primitive accounting. Anything else you need to know? Can you seriously believe this topic will ever get addressed by anyone? It’s definitely not a topic in the 2024 election year.
People talk a lot about “the system”. Under these circumstances, the system has no hope of working. For example:
Law enforcement is of course struggling with basic enforcement operations. One of the folksier modern options is to corrupt or discredit forensic evidence. There’s an unbelievable amount of that happening. Modern law enforcement depends on forensics in many cases. Surprise, surprise; the big news in the US is a massive increase in forensic data problems. Who benefits? Guess.
This article is just a bare-bones synopsis selectively targeting simple criminal operations to illustrate core issues. Apply these same principles to almost anything in human life. It’s humans vs money. It’s no contest. Money doesn’t just talk; it gives orders. What happens will usually be what the money wants. …And guess who’s got the money?
To fix this, you’d have to redesign the way money works. The money probably won’t like that.
_________________________________________________________
Disclaimer
The opinions expressed in this Op-Ed are those of the author. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the Digital Journal or its members.
