There’s a popular swimming around here that’s near a rough neighborhood. One elderly gentleman from that neighborhood guards the cars at the swimming hole. He even got himself a shirt that says “security”. You pay $2 and he makes sure nobody busts the windows out of your car.

Do you think this is blackmail as described by your parent comment, or a genuine (albeit unofficial) offer of protection?

No, I don’t think it’s blackmail in this particular situation. Though that definitely does exist here in other spots. This is just an old guy who tries to quell the riff-raff of the youth of the neighborhood. He’s really sweet actually. And if you bring him a cold beer, he’ll do a quick cleaning of your windows to boot!

I'm aware, and have used, this practice in Oakland, CA, Los Angeles, SF, Boston, Philadelphia, Seattle and Portland OR. One reason I keep a small amount of cash around - just for the vig.

It's extortion. You're paying protection money.

Yep, and my stuff was protected. Been doing it since at least 1995.

You have been financing crime.

I prefer to think of it as financing entrepreneurs.

At least the scale is much smaller than giving VC money to likes of Uber and AirBnB. So you have moral upper-hand.

Every tax dollar you pay finances one human crime or another.

I’m discovering an increasing number of edgelords here on HN.

You know that what you said isn’t true. Or you are really badly informed.

Canadianfella is correct. "Vig" is not the correct term. Vig, short for vigorish, is a yiddish/Slavic word used to describe the excessive interest on a loan from a lender of ill-repute. It's also used to describe the house's take of a book.

It's not just money you pay to shady people. If he charged you $5 for parking, but allowed you to pay when you came back, but it would be $10 instead, you could say the additional $5 was the vig as that represents a 100% interest on a short term loan.

This is common all over the developing world. I always give them a little something, despite the feel of extortion it has to it. It’s marginally better than begging, and they will really watch the car, and often help with parking and leaving. Fair enough.

I once confronted them in Morocco. They replied they needed to eat by moving their hand into their mouth. I felt bad

In the one of the Third world countries I lived in, the more attentive ones would also put a piece of cardboard on your windshield. A nice touch.

Not so much the guys that insist on spraying your windshield with soap at every traffic light.

There is often a fine line between crime, commerce and even altruism. It is a shame that western society has been perhaps a little too effective at separating these concepts. The very same contract could be any of them in different contexts:

"Party A pays 1 Pound Sterling for the item owned by Party B"

Crime: Party A blackmails Party B into selling them the item at a discount

Commerce: Party B offers the discount to entice Party A to try the item out, so that they can sell more at full price in the future

Altruism: Party B wants to give the item to a good home rather than destroying it (if that would cost them, then it's even mutually beneficial altruism from both parties)

Clearly it is the context about how the contract was made that distinguishes the situations. It would be a mistake to try to classify every possible contract as legitimate based on its semantics alone.

“Soap”

That happened to me at least a few times; I never went for it, and nothing bad happened in those instances. In retrospect, I suppose I'm surprised. But perhaps it was sort of randomized, so that people wouldn't draw obvious conclusions?