Be a criminal never was easy because you can't trust anyone and risk to be killed every moment and often is your best friend that pull the trigger or flip but what made wiseguys different was that in the glorious days,in my opinion from the 1930s to the Valachi hearings,was more easy to made money because the old guys that come from poverty was more tought and ready to go to prison (and like in Goodfellas the life in prison was more easy for a mobster) and also was more easy to bribe someone and even with the drugs you would have the garsh sentences of today.
For this reasons in to be a wiseguy there were more strengths than defects but now the wiseguys are like the other criminals and for this reason that many mobsters refused to be made because is like to put a target for the feds on his back.
I agree with your assessment. Years back their lives were poverty filled and there was little to lose. Even life inside a jail was often better than the conditions they came from.
Today it is much different......across the board. Both in "quality" of guy who is drawn to the life, and the laws and conditions around them
What I saying is that in the 1930s-1950s the mosters was emigrated from italy or was a second generation americans that still speak italian and saw Cosa Nostra as a brotherhood and prefer to die than be a snitch or to spend long years in prison.
When in the 1960s-1970s they was replaced by full americanized mobsters that saw the mob only as a way to made money and doesnt want to spend years in prison or put the family beyond the blood family that the american Cosa Nostra become to lost strenght and with the RICO and Witsec in the 1980s that the american mafia was seriously damaged.
Now with a poor recruitment pool of course there still young stand up guys like Pappa or DeFrancisci or Nicodemo in philly but are only exceptions.
