I think one of the big things nobody has mentioned is Membership. The other is Rules.

The Mafia is like a quasi-religious cult. In the Mafia membership is one of the most difficult and important things to attain. Like they said in Goodfellas, "It's like a license to steal". The reason why the families have lasted so long is the family is supposed to be more important than the self. Obviously this is bs a lot of times, but even today people in the Mafia respect the structure and rules to a large degree. Now I'm not saying it's still the 50s, but there's still a lot of respect for the rules, which is why the Mafia is still in power.

Anybody who operates inside a mafia region who isn't a member, risks a Mafia member reaching out and taking a piece of their action. Often independent operators seek out the mob for protection from other criminals.

A cartel is a far looser organization. Nobody is sworn in as a member or pledges loyalty to the organization. That's why we see splinter groups like the Zetas splitting off from the Gulf Cartel, the Zetas recently splitting into two or more groups, etc. Cartel membership is very hard to define and people disagree on what counts as membership. Is a wholesaler in Buffalo a member of the Sinaloa Cartel? Or, just an independent operator who has a connect?

The Zeta/Gulf split would never happen in LCN. Look at the Gallo Crew - They had basically three options: 1) Eventually fall in line behind Profaci 2) Kill Profaci and take over the family themselves 3) Or, get transferred over to another family. The idea that they could form their own family? Never could've happened in a million years. The other family wouldn't have recognized them. They risked being killed by *other families* too.

The cartels don't give a shit. You got a supply? You got customers? Then you're golden. You'd obviously have to fight off other cartels, but you don't need anyone to grant them legitimacy so to speak.

The cartels are also all structured differently. The Zetas were like a paramilitary operation. The Sinaloa Cartel like a federation of different traffickers and bosses, with a lot of independent traffickers underneath them.

Just think about all of the rules in LCN: No sleeping with another made guy's wife, nobody who was a former police officer can be a member (happens all the time in Mexico), no killing of women and children (at least in US LCN), and on and on. Honestly, if the Cartels had the same level of rules as LCN they would be far less violent.

The cartels are more like a corporation than a organization, you have the CEOs controlling everything and then the managers/staff managers and so on. I guess the commadantes and ranking organization members have some type of legitimacy. As for the wholesalers, the cartels take more of a hands off approach, meaning they still abide by CEO rules but they do everything by in a semi-idependent manner. Similar to CEO of different organizations and corporations handling upper business regulations but the lower level or semi idenpendent whole sallers going or abiding by rules and regulations.