Tue, 01 Sep 2009

Bootylicious - A History of Pirates

Fascinating stuff: perhaps there was a bit more truth in Pirates of the Caribbean than we all realized...

Are pirates socialists or capitalists? Lately, it’s become hard to tell the categories apart. Toward the end of his book, Leeson suggests that pirate self-governance proves that companies can regulate themselves better than governments can, as if he sees the pirate ship as a prototype of the modern corporation, sailing through treacherously liberal waters. Such arguments haven’t aged well over the past year, but even in piracy’s golden age people were aware that an unregulated marketplace invites predators. During the South Sea Bubble of 1720, speculators claiming to be able to make wealth out of debt fleeced British investors and ruined many banks. Pirates who spent that year killing and plundering, Nathaniel Mist grumpily wrote, could salve their guilty consciences, if they had any: “Whatever Robberies they had committed, they might be pretty sure they were not the greatest Villains then living in the World.”

(link) [The New Yorker]

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