It must also be stressed that forms of behavior comparable to extortion are rife in the world of ordinary commodities. Imagine that blowing up a shop window was an act of intimidation to extort money from an innocent merchant. In abstract economic terms one might say that chose responsible were trying to increase demand for their product by unfair means. Consider now a company producing cars which puts coven pressure on the government or on individual politicians to spend more money on highways and Jess on railways, irrespective of whether this is in the public interest. The latter example is, in economic terms, precisely analogous to the former: the car company is also trying to increase demand for its produce by unfair means.

XREF: Connects to critiques of corporate rent-seeking and regulatory capture in political economy literature.

Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia The Busi…, loc. 76