Why would any society, no matter how decadent and corrupt tolerate a Thieves Guild operating in the public spotlight...

Because they're not the Thieve's Guild. They're the Habedasher's Guild, or they're the Candlemaker's Guild, or the Cheesemonger's Guild, or maybe they're even the Canecarver's Guild.
Any claims that the Guild engages in thieverey - or anything that isn't habedashery/candlemaking/cheesemongering/canecarving - is a slanderous liar, and will be contacted by one of the Guild's "attorneys."

England had something similar. Thief catchers were private investigators who the wealthy hired to get back their stolen goods. This before the invention of the modern police force and professional detectives.

Anyway, most maintained contacts in the underworld. Some just knew people who knew people. Some had paid informants. And a few conspired with the thieving gangs themselves.

Part of the reason that even possessing stolen goods is illegal under English Common Law is that some merchants were fences, operating legitimate fronts reselling stolen goods... often right back to the people their confederates had stolen from.

Anyway, in many cultures criminality becomes organized and then institutionalized. There's a persuasive story that FDR made a deal with the mafia at the start of WW2 to keep most of the heat off them if they didn't push things too far and didn't interfere with wartime production. FDR couldn't spare the money or manpower to bother chasing them down because he had Nazis to kill. Other leaders in history have made similar arrangements and some last for much longer than a few years. Word is that North Korea's organized crime has an understanding with the secret police, for example.

Jesus that picture makes me sad

Why sad? To me it's hilarious.

Because they're just unionized shadowrunners.

And it works best when there are semilegitimate crimes that are illegal but widely practiced and seen as personal vices, victimless crimes. Prostitution, alcohol during Prohibition, gambling, black market capitalism in a socialist country, secret abortion doctors, drugs, illegal female genital mutilation surgery, pornography, cock fighting/dog fighting, underground boxing, samizdat, smuggling, forged travel documents... Point being that the attitude is that people will find a way to get their hands on this shit. And politicians may condemn it but behind closed doors they practice it. So if someone has to do it, why not an organized crime outfit that keeps business relatively peaceful and stable? And one that probably has political cover from those same politicians anyway. The idea is that they are considered tolerable because their bread and butter crimes are "illegal but inevitable and not too outrageous."

They're better than the city guard at quelling thievery. You steal something without a licence, you'd best expect a visit from the guild.

Isn't organized crime usually mostly the Drug Dealer and Pimp's Guild, more than the Thieves Guild?

Sleight of Hand and Streetwise are Thief skills.

They pay taxes.

See Professional criminals rarely outright steal things in broad daylight, although extortion and threats of violence are common.

There is an exception however. Depending on the political mood of an area and the people in power, stealing from certain groups like foreigners, members of a minority religion, or basically anyone without actual political power or who's generally hated or used as a scapegoat by the average person anyway... yeah, they're A-OK to steal from. Kinda like how certain pickpockets and scam artists in Europe deliberately target American tourists.

Read up on the poverty and dire conditions of the Italian mezzogiorno.

That's how we got the Camorra.

Thieves Guilds don't operate in the open. They work just like mafioso, or the cartels.

It's tolerated because the guild is in the best position to ensure that thefts are properly targeted and executed to minimize damage to the total economy and citizenry instead of just willy-nilly robbery everywhere.

Some of the older townsfolk may grouse but no one wants to go back to the winter that the only alchemist in 30 miles was laid up with a busted knee and everyone had to make due with what meager offerings his apprentices could manage to concoct without him. At least now things fall off trucks semi-evenly and you can get cough syrup that works.

Why would a pimp or drug dealer need Sleight of Hand? Holdout, yeah. Merchant, yeah. Observation, yeah. Streetwise, yeah. But Sleight of Hand?

t. Never committed a crime

Sleight of Hand is one of the best ways to scam wealth tourists and foreigners out of their money. Yeah, it;s not a "victimless" crime, but when nobody gives a shit about the victims anyway and sorta wants them the fuck out of their city, it really doesn't matter.

Yeah, but that's for shell game scams and wallet lifts, NOT dealing drugs or pimping.

Pretty sure you don't use sleight of hand to slap your bitches if you're a pimp

Have you ever seen a drug-dealer or a pimp count money? Gotta be fast when peeps are watching.

Because the theives guild maintains galf of the 'Secret Peace' in the city. Essentially that nobody who the constables are actually beholden to gets stolen from, and the cops dont bust the heads of any major crimal organization that follows the guild.

Crime is inevitable, but random crime is worse than crime you are in business with. Murders and pickpockets still get the full weight of the law if caught in the act, but the bigger sorts of crime that make the real money get a blind eye.

It also provides other uses. A trustworthy interface for men of wealth to hire 'quality' thugs and theives for unscrupulus deeds on the quick. And the Guild reports on anything brewing in the underground that would actually upset things, like revolution.

Aside from realistic organized crime there's the option that the "Thieves Guild" may also be or at least be controlled/masterminded by Secret Police or other internal affairs group.

A cracksman, who is a fairly low-class thief with no real knowledge, breaks into an upper-class townhouse and loots some shinies and sundries. He does so with information and any specific orders from his crew leader who is for him (and the rest of his crew) the only contact with higher echelons in the guild. Whatever. He gets opportunities in exchange for profit-sharing and the knowledge to get special consideration or placement should he relocate or something, plus the law tends to turn a blind eye to guild crimes.

The crew leader, a guild veteran who would probably be a still small-time independent criminal without the guild (so the same thing but on his own) takes a cut of course, and maybe a couple of the sundries that were specifically requested stolen. He got some details on the potential job from the city's Guildmaster, and of course pays a kickback from his take of this and other jobs pulled by him and his crew to the guildmaster, along with any articles that were specifically required. the Crew Leader might suspect something of the truth, but has no real evidence to disbelieve the story he's told on the surface: the city Guildmaster is in charge of the guild in this city and is at the top of the food chain on a more or less equal level with masters of other cities.

The City's guildmaster knows that to keep the guild (and himself) alive he must sometimes take orders from and provide requested materials/actions to a fairly shadowy type of person who seems like government but might just be a super-guild kingpin who pretty much owns the legit government. It's not onerous, but that relationship is the one dark cloud over the criminal's head.

>TFW when the last campaign I was in had a Sultan's spymaster literally get like 90% his information from the city Thieve's Guild and regularly invite high ranking members to the palace for drinks.

The shadowy figure, of course, is an agent of the government. His work is directed by the leader's "Advisor" (and spymaster) who in turn is at least presumably working at the leader's direction and in his interest.

Only the cracksman, or MAYBE the crew leader is directly exposed to capture from the other, public arm of the law, and even if the leader's political rivals manage to get control of the investigation, the cracksman can only give up his own crew, and the crew leader at worst can give up the city's guildmaster. Even facing opposition and with an independent judiciary, any evidence against the guildmaster is probably circumstantial enough to get him off without much trouble and should that be impossible (or undesirable) he can be burned and probably won't have enough knowledge to cause blowback against his handler, much less his handler's boss, the spymaster, or the Leader. And other Cells of the "Thieves Guild" will be largely untouched.

The existence of a Thieves Guild is maintained as an open secret -- it gets new thieves into the control network and obfuscate's the guild's true purpose: if everyone is looking for kingpins of organized crime, they won't connect the dots to realize that the Leader's advantages on his rivals were gained through such illicit means -- at worst, they'll probably suspect their local officials of corruption, which lets the higher echelons "crack down" on potentially troublesome and independent lower ranks under the pretense of fighting the Thieves' Guild.

The important is "keeping face" no matter what.

We call them "militias" around here. They're for your protection from the bandits, rapists and wrong people in general.

japansubculture.com/resources/yakuza-organisations/
The Yakuza are much more polite and tactful than us, however.

Well the Thieves' Guild wouldn't call themselves a Thieves' Guild unless they're Thief-Catchers.

>samizdat
I probably don't want to know what that is.

In most poor countries you get an absurdly high sentence if you steal from a tourist vs a local.

Some countries value tourism I guess

We value tourism here in Brazil.
The problem is finding and identifying which of the dozens of street monkeys stole from you and knowing that he will be released from prison a year later because all penitentiaries are way overpopulated.

Samizdat is the underground publishing of prohibited texts. It's by far the least offensive thing on that list.

Just like we do in real life.
Have an extremely complicated and bureaucratic justice system.

There wouldn't be a Thieves Guild if law enforcers could just kill criminals and dump them in a hole in the ground without any kind of proof, testimonies or trial, with absolutely no social repercussions afterwards.

You realize that under that system the citizens would instead be victimized and intimidated by cops who can freely kill them with no proof, oversight, or repercussions?

>inb4 some edgelord says that's already what police do

Yes, of course.
I'm not saying its good.

But its a trade off, though. Now we're safe from being harassed by the police but in turn we can't bring corrupt powerful people to justice.

Last time I checked investment banking was both legal and socially accepted

In Morrowind, the Thieves Guild is tolerated by the Imperial authorities because they are good, honest Imperial scum, as opposed to the native criminal gangs who are more violent, cruel and (most importantly) anti-Imperial.

Because you dont operate in the open everywhere. If you live in a bigger city you know how this shit works. Everyone above the age of 15 knows someone who has something to do with organied crime, and i mean fucking everyone, even that kind old lady down the street who you help take the bags up the stairs. But they dont do shit in the open and dont bother anyone too important/ anyone you know well. Thus you dont give a fuck, plus giving a fuck might mean you catch a stray bullet so you dont give a fuck even more

They protect us from ninja monkeys, Denylson.
Rio de Janeiro truly is a shithole.

Pratchett did it well I think. Basically see and but there's a bit more to it than that.

May get some details wrong because it's been a while since I read Discworld, but basically the thieves guild is allowed to exist because there will be thieves regardless, so they might as well be organised and predictable, rather than a bunch of madmen with no standards who might do very irrational and dangerous things. The thieves get to work as they please without fear of being persecuted by police, provided they can produce a thieving license from the guild (which requires admittance to the guild and adherence to their rules, which include leaving the victim a receipt they can use as a tax write-off). One of the things the guild is permitted to do, just outside of the law, is punish those who they catch stealing their business (stealing without a guild membership) brutally, cutting off fingers and ears and shit (so they are actually a form of less-than-ethical law enforcement). In return, the guild just has to pay taxes. Plenty of people in Ankh-Morpork earn a dishonest living as members of the thieves guild, stealing reasonable amounts from old ladies and punishing unsanctioned thieves (and taking their haul).

Japan & yakuza

Because the thieves' guild is the one establishment keeping the thieves from running out of control, either from any select few thieves gaining unchallenged power, or from all the thieves running unchecked in competition over a scarcity of shit to steal. (I assume the thieves outnumber the valued stealable commodities in this area because if they didn't there'd be no call to establish a guild in the first place) and by consequence if you try to dismantle the thieves guild, or arrest/kill/banish all thieves via the law in open conflict you've got a bloody high body count war in the streets on your hands. Now on the one hand you might argue that an adequate police force would've prevented this overpopulation of thieves, but if it's any kind of normally developing urban setting then the growth in wealth and population inevitably means thieves crop up fast than they can be pulled in, unless the authority was already somehow large enough to handle the expanding urban population at sizes it hadn't even reached yet as it grew. Like if for some reason someone high up just knew thieves would be a huge problem and set out to stifle any and all thieving from the get go. Anyway, point being that once the thieves' guild is almost inevitably established, it is in fact in your best interest to maintain good relations and a certain kind of cold war relation between crime and law thru organized means because the alternatives all result in an elevated and dense crime rate that would be reckless negligence on behalf of the law to have knowingly instigated.

We allow all kinds of openly corrupt and criminal organizations to exist in the real world, a thieves guild in a fantasy universe is not a stretch at all. It's all about greasing the right wheels and being friends with the right people. Think of all the famous mob bosses and gangsters. They went out to eat all the time, they bought luxury cars, nice clothes, etc. Everyone knew what these people were, but they could never conclusively prove that they committed X crime and Y location because they were sheltered by a team of lawyers and fall guys.

Partisan politics is another example. How many people out there vote for the same corrupt politicians over and over again, because they only vote for one party? People are tribalistic as fuck, and they will tolerate any number of crimes as long as it means protecting the group they identify with.

The Yakuza actually operate largely above board. They own their own office buildings with family crest and name out front. Their goons legit have business cards with their full name, contact info and rank listed underneath the family title. Whacking people with katanas aside, most of their businesses are legit business models in most regards, but with the occasional twist or front for something else. But it's not like the pulpy crime fiction where every hostess bar is secretly a human trafficking catalog, sometimes a hostess club is a legit hostess club, because it's actually a profitable business, but a little list of girls who leave or who don't quite make the cut gets handed off to someone who makes porno, or the girls get recommended to certain family owned apartments or boarding houses so their paychecks just come right back to the family. There are actually a lot of massage parlors that are crazy double bluffs where they look like seedy "massage parlors" where you'll pay a little extra for a happy end but then they'll take your large unsolicited tip and just give you an underwhelming massage and let you go. A lot of them target tourists but some prey on college students or salary men with little experience with prostitution fronts. Because what are you going to tell the cops? That the totally legal exactly-what-it-says-on-the-tin business didn't commit a crime when you paid them to? They've got a thousand little tricks to hide the tree in the forest in ways like that, it's actually really fascinating.

Discworld's Guild of Thieves, Cutpurses, Housebreakers and Allied Trades:

"Nowadays, the modern, properly registered Thieves' Guild makes money mainly by having rich people pay an annual premium, and arrange for a convenient date to rob an acceptable amount from these rich clients in their own home. For the poorer (but not penniless) citizens who do not arrange for premiums and appointments, the Thieves quite politely rob them in the streets, in their business premises, or in their homes, not badly injuring them, and always leaving them a receipt which guarantees that these people will not be inconvenienced with another official robbery for the rest of the year. Some of the very modern Thieves stand in front of a prospective client in a dark alley, introduce the Ankh-Morporkian guild arrangement, ask for money, and give gifts such as "genuine crystal glasses", or a book of coupons to visitors to the quaint city.

Since the guild also includes the housebreakers, for an annual fee you can become entitled for a brass plaque to put over your door, so that you won't be officialy burgled.

Someone found to rob or steal without a license can get arrested by the Watch Officers, and that is a good fate. The fatal fate for an unlicensed thief will be to meet Thieves' Guild enforcers, who will capture him, kill him, and hang his body somewhere in the city, put him up on top of the Guild building where buildings usually have weathervanes or hang him from the gallows.

There is another good reason why the Guild suits Vetinari in its current form. A significant proportion of what it reaps every year via its criminal activities is paid on to the City as Guild Tax. Thus, by-passing the inefficent and possibly Inland Revenue, diligently collected by the Guild and paid promptly to Vetinari, the Patrician enjoys all the benefits of receiving taxation revenue while escaping the blame and opprobium of actually collecting it."

Pimping is in fact a weird kind of sleigh of hand. You'll see when you hire a 10/10 and get a 6/10 instead, good luck complaining about the service.

TP would have made a great GM.

Also citizens can purchase what is essentially insurance against guild crime. The Guild get your premium and hence a much steadier source of income than random robberies and you get to go about your lawful business without fear of at least licensed crime. Unlicensed crime goes down because the Guild has a number of *extremely* inventive methods of reprisal if they catch you which means only the really stupid or really psychotic bother.