The merging thing never seemed like a possibility to me. At least not for the foreseeable future. These aren't legit corporations. A captain in one of the other families isn't going to want to suddenly become responsible for a bunch of Colombo guys that he doesn't know that well. While there may be some guys (associates) who drift over to other families, seems to me it would be more likely the other families would just let the Colombos continue to deteriorate and scoop up their rackets. Heck, the Genovese did that to the Gambinos in the 1990's. But again, we're a long way off from the Colombos fading out.