The government is not very different from organized crime.

I'll assume your assert that "THE" government refers to the United States government since we are both Americans and your description includes elements that are particular to the US govt. Your assertion is unclear in that you qualify with "not much different" which is vague at best. And although this debate is inherently limited by the subjectivity of "not much", I thought this could be interesting enough. So, while I do agree that the US government and Casa Nostra have certain similarities, they are fundamentally different organizations and therefore "very much different" or at least more different than "not much". So here I proceed... Legitimization: The United States government is made up of democratically elected representatives chosen by civilians. As Thomas Paine argued at the beginning of Common Sense, governments do not create society, but society creates a government. In the case of a republican democracy, society chooses to retain control over the act of governance. You cite taxes as an example of "extortion", but since taxes are levied by the House of Representatives, every member of which is democratically elected, we can only be extorting ourselves, which is absurd. When a mob member comes into your store and says something to the extent of "what a fine establishment you have here, shame if it burned down. I could offer you protection in the neighborhood for a monthly payment..." you cannot state that his actions are "unconstitutional" or that you will vote him out of office next term. You can merely pay him or lose your property. And while refusing to pay the IRS results in the same ultimatum, there is an entirely different option: changing government. As for your example regarding the government telling us what is legal or illegal, we elect a president who presides over the FDA, we elected the congress which passed the Controlled Substances Act, and we can vote for candidates in favor of legalization. Power Structure: The comparison you draw between the president and don, the congress and the caporegime, and the military and the boss's soldiers is illusory. Again, this model fails to account for the existence of the citizens who play an active role in determining the personnel of the hierarchy. In the USA there theoretically is no hierarchy, but mere checks and balances on the different actions of government. While studying Italian history, I wrote a paper on the development of the Sicilian mafiosi out of the feudal structures the Normans implemented when controlling the island in the Central Middle Ages. Since French absolutist monarchy also stems from Norman feudalism, I would argue that the mafia actually resembles much more an absolute monarch, where the don is the king, the caporegime are the nobility who can plot to overthrow the king, and the soldiers act as vassals or serfs under this. Moreover, in a feudal kingdom or monarchy, there is no such thing as a "citizen", but rather there are "subjects" which make a lot more sense when comparing a government to the mob. The shop owner I used as an example would be a subject of the mafia, thus having no role in the affairs of the mob. Italy as Case Study: To further my case, I would like to examine modern Italy since 1870 as example of the incompatibility of your model. Because Sicily had been foreign controlled, until it was liberated by Garibaldi in the Risorgimento, since Roman times, Sicily had become very comfortable with creating internal power structures (ie. Mafiosi) to govern day-to-day life where a king presiding in Spain, France or the Holy Roman Empire could not. Mafia values of honor, retribution, and loyalty were very different in the city-states of the Northern Italian peninsula- whose values derived from their self-rule and included citizenship, civic humanism, and rule by law. So, when "Italy" implemented a liberal style democracy after unification, the South and Sicily in particular had difficulty adapting their medieval values into a USA style liberal democracy, whereas the north transferred smoothly to a liberal democracy. This well documented clash of socio-political values serves to show how different the structure of a mafia is from a US style republic. Rule of Law: You cite "punishment" and enforcement as similarities between mobs and the government. This is fallacious. We punish criminal based upon laws and a system of justice. The mafia has no laws and only is subject to the whims of the boss. So really, similar effects have entirely different causes.