Private protection is not supplied on the basis of principles, let alone universal principles. Like any other market good it is supplied strictly on the basis of opportunity, and opportunities are not always conducive to protecting all sides in a transaction. Whom they protect and how is a matter not of course but of choice—a complex economic choice. (The consequent shifts in the types of protected people have been the cause of much confusion. Mafiosi have been identified with whomever they were protecting at a given moment, and changes of customer have been mistaken for changes in the nature of the mafia.)

XREF: Links to the political science concept that private security follows markets, echoing theories of mafia as a business enterprise (e.g., Gambetta).

Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia The Busi…, loc. 61