3 ms·
Thats actually a very good question. I can think of a few ways to make pirating unprofitable. Or dangerous. But unfortunately can't think of any non-violent
by ankeshk 17y ago
Thats actually a very good question. I can think of a few ways to make pirating unprofitable. Or dangerous. But unfortunately can't think of any non-violent way.
* Equip all the ships with armament. The pirate teams are small in size. So hopefully, the investment in arms wouldn't be a lot to fight them off.
* Turn the table. Offer an insane "Reward" to anyone who captures one of the local elders - the people who give anchoring permission.
- hkuo 17y agoNot sure either of those would work. I don't think companies would want to spend money for weapons, nor the cost of training employees to use them, nor the liability of what happens if they are used and any ensuing results. They want the police or government to simply take care of it, and they spend no money at all. Unless that happens, it's probably less cost to simply accept piracy as a cost of busienss. For the reward to capture or off a local elder, that just opens up a spot for another person to fill in.
- ankeshk 17y agoThanks for your comment. For the reward to capture or off a local elder, that just opens up a spot for another person to fill in. If you put up rewards on local elders if they provide anchoring permission, there is no incentive for local elders to provide the permission anymore. If the local elder still provides permission and he is successfully captured for a big reward, then he may be replaced. But I doubt the new elder will provide permission to anyone else again.
- hundredwatt 17y agoReminds of a story from Greg Mankiw's blog on Machiavellian Entrepreneurs: http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2008/07/machiavellian-entrepreneurs.html http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2008/07/machiavellian-entrepr...
- sstrudeau 17y agoA friend's brother pilots a freighters. They always have a couple of armed Gurkha's (Nepalese mercenaries) on board. So some companies are willing to pay for armed security for their ships; but a few armed ships is clearly an insufficient deterrent to the entire enterprise of piracy.
- khafra 17y agoIt depends on who has a larger profit margin, the shipping companies or the pirates. If a random 5% of freighters are armed heavily enough to destroy or capture a pirate vessel, the pirates have to be making enough profit for a total loss in 1 of 20 raids to be worth it.
- philk 17y agoI don't think you'll get anyone to take you up on the local elder thing. If someone turns in the local elder and gets a whole lot of cash their life expectancy won't be very good. Cash is only good if you're alive to spend it. Look at it this way, we've had insane rewards out on Osama Bin Laden for a while and have precisely dick as a result. On a side note, you also need really good intel on the ground to make sure that the guy you're paying money for really is a local elder and not some poor sucker who's being handed over for the money. Getting good intel in Somalia is a non-trivial problem.