A sad truth is that organized crime was honest in a funny sort of way. They told you what they were after to your face. Now, we have the slime in politics and big business that tell you what you want to hear to your face, and turn around and figuratively cut your throat behind your back. I’ll take the former way of dealing with people any time.
When I grew up in old Brooklyn, we had 3 groups to keep the peace: the Irish cops, the Italian mafia (Murder, Inc), and the Jewish vigilantes. Know what? There was almost zero street crime, old folks and regular people could walk around perfectly safe, and kids respected authority, went to school to learn (not cause trouble), and even though it was a poor slum neighborhood, no one bothered to lock their doors because, any street crime, and the next day or so, a body would turn up in some alley and the 3 groups mentioned would simply smile at each other