No Stupid Questions

I'm not sure if it would be better or worse, but even in places where organized crime is stable and relatively low key, there's not much in the way of cooperation.

Like, in the city I used to work in, the drug trade was pretty much owned by one group, gambling by another, moonshine by a third, and if you wanted guns, you tended to deal with the drug guys, but that was because they had outside deals with one or another of the cartels (I have no clue which) where they could get more than just the same stuff you could buy on your own legally (but would probably buy a stolen one if you were looking for something for a reason). This meant that they ran the trade de facto, despite it not being something they cared about if someone else sold guns here and there.

Now, the cartels did have people that were killers. But not hired guns, so to speak.

But those groups didn't really communicate. There weren't regular meetings to divvy up the city's vices or anything. They just didn't fuck with each other because they weren't set up to handle other trades.

There were some Russians that tried to move in at one point, running heroin, but they went away. Went away being a euphemism for eating a bunch of lead salad, which is bad for one's longevity. Supposedly, and I was not involved in the shit at all, it was handled in house, nobody asked the cartel for any help. The cartel wouldn't have been willing to send their men up, fight some group anyway. They'd just wait and make deals in other ways. Not worth it in terms of risk/reward. They'd sell guns to the gang, but not manpower.

Again, supposedly, there was an Armenian gang that ran gambling at one point, and they got busted which opened up room for the mixed group to pick up the pieces. But that was before I paid any attention to any of it. Only reason I paid enough attention to pick that kind of stuff up was bouncing and doing security. The guys running shine liked to swing dick around bars sometimes, trying to play a protection bullshit, and the titty bars I bounced sometimes were fairly popular with them in that regard and because they could get free attention.

Also have a friend that made high interest personal loans for a few years, and he had to pay a cut to the guys running the gambling. I mean, didn't have to, it was just easier and safer. One of his uncles was a moonshiner, so he knew some of those guys as well.

From what I gathered, that's the way most cities operate. There may have been a time when there was more broad organization, but afaik, that was dying out in the eighties.

However, pretty much any city of any decent size has some kind of organized crime. It's just a matter of how big the group is, and how much they control. Some places, you'll have one of the national level gangs running things, others it might be all small groups running territories within a city. Shit, it isn't just cities. The drug trade is like that out here in the boonies. Only difference is that you run into specific types of drugs being handled by a group. Locally, there's a bike "club" that more or less runs the meth and pills, but weed is a free for all, and coke is really only for making crack, which is spread all over.

Anyway, that's going way off topic. The point is that there's rarely any kind of cooperation at all, much less enough to have some kind of justice system in place.

You do understand that the black market isn't an actual place/thing? It's just a term used for spaces that facilitate the trade of illegal goods...