KamikazeArchon t1_j8m1sni wrote
Reply to comment by Atypicalicious in Once manufacturing moves almost entirely into space and the workers want drugs, gambling and prostitution and wanted criminals on Earth can escape to space, the solar system away from gravity wells will become largely lawless. Who will do the policing and how? by [deleted]
"Professional criminals" as you're describing them virtually don't exist. They're a vanishingly small percentage.
Every criminal empire or organization of the kind you've described is heavily reliant on the rank-and-file, who barely get paid anything. You can't build a criminal organization that pays well; it simply does not work as a financial structure.
For every one high-rolling "mafioso" who can afford sports cars and penthouses, there are a hundred or a thousand street dealers and low-level thieves who probably make less than minimum wage.
The high-roller can maybe afford to go to space. The thousand street dealers cannot. And the high-roller, separated from the thousand street dealers supporting him, is just a guy in a fancy coat with a nice watch.
The kind of criminal enterprise you might get in space is white-collar criminality. Yakuza in space isn't likely, but Enron in space is.
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