Organized crime groups are regional, and by necessity they are somewhat parasitic, i.e., relegated to black and gray market economic activities.

The key similarities are use of force and intimidation, taxation, hierarchy, and propaganda.

Once a criminal organization gets powerful enough, it becomes able to whitewash its own image and branch into legitimate/legal economic pursuits. Also, with sufficient growth and power, the very laws themselves can be bent to legitimize past and current actions.

Criminal organizations also utilize principles of decentralization as a scaling strategy. There are elaborate transfer of power rituals, some resembling democratic processes and others not.

The goal of any criminal organization is to become larger and more powerful, but there are extra spoils due to premium prices for black market endeavors. Criminal organizations seize opportunities where laws exist but are poorly enforced... or in other words, where there is no de facto prohibition against black/gray market activity (such as the tens of thousands of asian massage brothels in the US).

With additional revenue comes better propaganda and the freedom to clean up the organization's image. There is also a turning point when the group benefits more from harnessing moral indignation against certain behavior, and the wise populist criminal group will not let this go to waste.

What you're talking about is basically just the means by which a status quo is maintained... again, yes, there's parallels, but the point of the government is to support all the people and their ability to continue to live and prosper. The point of the mafia is to make money/power for a small percentage of people and keep their market position.

China will make sure you go to school. China will make sure you have rice to eat. The mafia will make sure they get a piece of your rice and the school's lunch money. They're a selfish organization concerned with profit and not social issues, whereas the government's position is that the people matter.

If you want to compare government and organized crime, the Yakuza are probably the closest to a formal government. For example, they have some legitimate business interests and different tactics for gaining influence in multiple markets, they're more transparent than the mafia, and they're often altruistic.

Criminal businesses must by necessity adopt some of the work of governments because they are outside the scope of what the actual government does provide. You can't take your rival drug dealer to court over a dispute. You have to settle it in other ways. The threat of force isn't always a business model. Sometimes it's a substitute for legal recourse.

Legal recourse is the substitute for the role of violence in dispute resolution, not the other way around.

Agreed. I meant that when you operate outside of the law, there is no legal recourse, and therefore you might have to resort to violence.

The Mafia is much closer to one-party governments like China, than all government.

This is a good point.

However I'd argue that a stable, two-party corporatist government is essentially the same as a one party government.

Note that Hillary and Trump and Jeb are running pretty much the identical platform when you consider the substantive parts.

What do you mean by corporatism? Do you mean it in Mussolini's sense?

There are substantive parts to Trump's campaign?

I know I'm being snarky, but literally the only campaign position he has published[0] is his "plan" for immigration reform.

[0]https://www.donaldjtrump.com/positions