There are good reasons, then, for the mafia not to intervene. So we are back where we started: Why don't the drivers in Palermo sort out the problem for themselves? It may be that they simply trust one another less than elsewhere in Italy. It is not simply a cliché that Sicilian culture encourages people to see conspiracies in random events. If a driver were lucky enough to land a few extra runs in a day, the other drivers would almost automatically leap to the conclusion that be was cheating. What is more, once they had formed this opinion, no one could induce them to change their minds. In Sicily there is nothing as suspicious as luck.

XREF: Connects to the broader theme of how trust (or its absence) shapes economic cooperation — contrasts with cooperative communities and their self-policing.

Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia The Busi…, loc. 603