Thanks for the replies guys, yeah I hate it when people say "Oh if the Mafia went up against a cartel it would lose big time". That's probably gonna be true but that situation would probably never arise in the first place, because the two groups have different interests. I'd say the Mafia's structure is really a genius move by it's creators because there's always space to fill the void if something goes down. Not to mention, that with it's many associates it can find ways of getting involved in all sorts of crimes and make money still.

Another thing that boggled my mind, I saw an article last year that the FBI said that mob earned roughly 20-90 billion or something like that....How much do you think the current mob earns??