There's no percentage in joining an organized crime family, if recent events are any indication. You have to do a miserable apprenticeship, and if and when you get "made," you have to kick at least half of your earnings upstairs (and get kicked if you don't earn), plus everyone around you is either gonna kill you or inform on you.
Consider this quote from "The Digger's Game" by George V. Higgins, one of the best crime novels ever (in a league with GF and Higgins' earlier "The Friends of Eddie Coyle"):
"Sooner or later they catch up with some guy, got made the same time you did, he's gonna spill his guts as usual, like every other goddamned g***** I hear about lately. Then you go to bed at night, you got a state cop under the window. In the morning, you get up, FGI onna doorstep. The afternoon, you're having lunch, Treasury guys swap the FBI guys off. Internal Revenue in the dinnertime. F*** that. My idea, getting made's a great idea, you want police protection. Otherwise, f*** it."