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The Invisible Hook: the Hidden Economics of Pirates

12 points by TriinT 17y ago

TriinT 17y ago
Some reviews of this book: http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/05/11/everyone_in_favor_say_yargh/ http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/05/11/... http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/brainiac/2009/06/pirates_leftist.html http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/brainiac/2009/06/pir... The book's author, Peter Leeson, wrote a paper which provides an interesting overview of this topic: "An-arrgh-chy: The Law and Economics of Pirate Organization" http://www.peterleeson.com/An-arrgh-chy.pdf http://www.peterleeson.com/An-arrgh-chy.pdf
sethg 17y ago
IIUC pirates operated with a certain amount of tolerance from the government--that is to say, from whichever government was unfriendly to the ships that were being pillaged. Legally there was a distinction between a privateer and a pirate, but in practice a lot of crews floated back and forth over the line, shall we say. A book modelling pirates as democratic capitalists avant la lettre ought to say something about the interactions between the internal government of the ship and these external powers, but from the ToC and the review, I can't tell if Leeson actually goes into this. Can any HN readers comment on the issue?
- johnnybgoode 17y ago
  This is from the book: "Chapter 5 applies the economics of reputation building to pirates’ famous fondness for torture. Pirate victims were understandably reluctant to reveal booty to their attackers. Some victims even hid or destroyed their valuables. Such behavior threatened to reduce pirates’ revenue. To prevent this, pirates invested in reputations of barbarity and insanity, creating a fearsome “brand name.” Brutally torturing resistors was one important way they did this. But pirates used torture for other reasons too. One was to deter authorities from harassing them. The other was to bring justice to predatory merchant ship captains when government couldn’t or wouldn’t do so. In this last capacity, pirate torture may have contributed to the provision of an important public benefit for merchant sailors-the punishment of dishonest merchant captains, which stood to reduce merchant captain abuse. Chapter 6 considers the economics of pirate conscription. According to popular depiction, pirates swelled their ranks by drafting innocent and unwilling sailors from the vessels they overtook. This chapter shows that in many cases the supposed “pirate press” was nothing more than a clever pirate ruse. In response to eighteenth-century legal changes that made pirating riskier, pirates pretended to conscript sailors to exploit a loophole in antipiracy law. Like all good businessmen, pirates developed solutions, such as this one, to advance their interests when rising costs threatened to cut against them."
  - sethg 17y ago
    Yeah, but that's about relations between the pirates and the states whose ships they pillaged. I'm wondering about the relations with the states whose ships weren't pillaged (as much).
johnnybgoode 17y ago
The author appears to confuse a democratically-run government with a democratic form of anarchy. Maybe this is for marketing reasons, because he ought to know the difference between the two. In any case, the press reviews completely fail to notice this, as you'd expect. It's important for us to remember which of the two is being described here, because they are diametrically opposed in many ways.
- seertaak 17y ago
  He also appears to confuse a group of 15-20 men on a boat for a society.

12 points by TriinT 17y ago

Some reviews of this book: http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/05/11/everyone_in_favor_say_yargh/ http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/05/11/... http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/brainiac/2009/06/pirates_leftist.html http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/brainiac/2009/06/pir... The book's author, Peter Leeson, wrote a paper which provides an interesting overview of this topic: "An-arrgh-chy: The Law and Economics of Pirate Organization" http://www.peterleeson.com/An-arrgh-chy.pdf http://www.peterleeson.com/An-arrgh-chy.pdf

sethg 17y ago

IIUC pirates operated with a certain amount of tolerance from the government--that is to say, from whichever government was unfriendly to the ships that were being pillaged. Legally there was a distinction between a privateer and a pirate, but in practice a lot of crews floated back and forth over the line, shall we say. A book modelling pirates as democratic capitalists avant la lettre ought to say something about the interactions between the internal government of the ship and these external powers, but from the ToC and the review, I can't tell if Leeson actually goes into this. Can any HN readers comment on the issue?

johnnybgoode 17y ago
This is from the book: "Chapter 5 applies the economics of reputation building to pirates’ famous fondness for torture. Pirate victims were understandably reluctant to reveal booty to their attackers. Some victims even hid or destroyed their valuables. Such behavior threatened to reduce pirates’ revenue. To prevent this, pirates invested in reputations of barbarity and insanity, creating a fearsome “brand name.” Brutally torturing resistors was one important way they did this. But pirates used torture for other reasons too. One was to deter authorities from harassing them. The other was to bring justice to predatory merchant ship captains when government couldn’t or wouldn’t do so. In this last capacity, pirate torture may have contributed to the provision of an important public benefit for merchant sailors-the punishment of dishonest merchant captains, which stood to reduce merchant captain abuse. Chapter 6 considers the economics of pirate conscription. According to popular depiction, pirates swelled their ranks by drafting innocent and unwilling sailors from the vessels they overtook. This chapter shows that in many cases the supposed “pirate press” was nothing more than a clever pirate ruse. In response to eighteenth-century legal changes that made pirating riskier, pirates pretended to conscript sailors to exploit a loophole in antipiracy law. Like all good businessmen, pirates developed solutions, such as this one, to advance their interests when rising costs threatened to cut against them."
- sethg 17y ago
  Yeah, but that's about relations between the pirates and the states whose ships they pillaged. I'm wondering about the relations with the states whose ships weren't pillaged (as much).

johnnybgoode 17y ago

The author appears to confuse a democratically-run government with a democratic form of anarchy. Maybe this is for marketing reasons, because he ought to know the difference between the two. In any case, the press reviews completely fail to notice this, as you'd expect. It's important for us to remember which of the two is being described here, because they are diametrically opposed in many ways.

seertaak 17y ago
He also appears to confuse a group of 15-20 men on a boat for a society.