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May 11, 2008
A Great Arrrgggument
Don Boudreaux
One of my and Russ's impressive young colleagues, Pete Leeson, has his research discussed in today's edition of the Boston Globe. (HT Pete Boettke)
Leeson makes clear that pirates on the high-seas evolved their own social order, one that makes good sense from the perspective of positive economics. Here's a slice from the article:
The pirates who roamed the seas in the late 17th and early 18th centuries developed a floating civilization that, in terms of political philosophy, was well ahead of its time. The notion of checks and balances, in which each branch of government limits the other's power, emerged in England in the Glorious Revolution of 1688. But by the 1670s, and likely before, pirates were developing democratic charters, establishing balance of power on their ships, and developing a nascent form of worker's compensation: A lost limb entitled one to payment from the booty, more or less depending on whether it was a right arm, a left arm, or a leg.
The idea of enlightened piracy is strange swill to swallow for those steeped in a pop culture version of the pirate - chaos on the high seas, drinking and pillaging, damsels forced onto the plank. Sure, there's something about the independence of piracy that still speaks to people today. (Even the founders of International Talk Like a Pirate Day acknowledge that there is, in people who love to say "Aargh," a yearning for a certain kind of freedom.) But it turns out that pirate life was more than just greedy rebellion. It offers insights into the nature of democracy and the reasons it might emerge - as a natural state of being, or a rational response to a much less pleasant way of life.
To Leeson, pirate democracy was an institution born of necessity. In one successful cruise, a pirate could take home what a merchant sailor earned in 50 years. Yet a business enterprise made up of the violent and lawless was clearly problematic: piracy required common action and mutual trust. And pirates couldn't rely on a government to set the rules. Some think that "without government, where would we be?" Leeson says. "But what pirates really show is, no, it's just common sense. You have an incentive to try to create rules to make society get along. And that's just as important to pirates as it is to anybody else."
So just as Buchanan, Tullock, and Mancur Olson were pioneers in using economics to help us to better understand the behaviors and institutions of stationary bandits, Pete Leeson is using economics to help us to better understand the behaviors and institutions of floating bandits
Posted by Don Boudreaux in Complexity and Emergence, Crime, Myths and Fallacies | Permalink
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Comments
It seems so obvious now that you've linked to a discussion about your colleague's research/work: pirates are 'progressive'. They've got a similar idealism about sacrificing for the betterment of the captain and crew [ask not what your country can do for you...], had a healthy disregard for other people's property, and used renewable energy resources to get around.
Do you suppose that they levied obscene profit taxes on one another too?
Posted by: LowcountryJoe | May 11, 2008 7:08:20 PM
'Tis interesting the way the article pointed out how the merchant ships were run like 'lil tyrannies' showing how if society were make a transition from Guvmint to Anarchism there'd probably wouldn't be anything mystically different.
P.S. Cleverly amusing title. ;)
Posted by: Gil | May 11, 2008 9:12:18 PM
'Tis interesting the way the article pointed out how the merchant ships were run like 'lil tyrannies' showing how if society were make a transition from Guvmint to Anarchism there'd probably wouldn't be anything mystically different.
Who at The Cafe is an anarchist? Who at The Cafe advocates for looting and theft by anarchistic individuals being a superior form of thievery than by the collective know as government?
You must not be paying attention, Gil. We libertarian-leaning people bash the state because we don't have anarchy here to bash. We bash the state because we do not accept that collective theft is any more palatable...in spite of the Left's mission to indoctrinate us all into believing that there's nobility in it and that the majority are on-board.
Posted by: LowcountryJoe | May 11, 2008 10:45:57 PM
OK, this was way over my head. Can anyone recommend a economics for dummies site?
Posted by: Job Search Engines | May 12, 2008 7:47:16 AM
Hmmm...I'm not so sure about the wisdom of portraying piracy as an example of free market capitalism.
Posted by: David P. Graf | May 12, 2008 7:52:26 AM
David,
I agree with you, most of us will; but I read the entire article and Don's comments and do not see one example of promotion of piracy as an example of free market capitalism. An example of democracy, yes; free market capitalism, no.
Even the fact that the cited democracy (piracy) obtained its riches via theft is a perfect fit.
Posted by: vidyohs | May 12, 2008 9:31:58 AM
In Pirate democracy there is no Captain or Crew all govern under the basic of equal-power to bring the ship into the save harbor.
"Captains held absolute power" => totally wrong, it's democracy the Mutineer have right to Hang the captain or all of their follower (super delegates) any time they needed when they not acceptable to lead.
Posted by: donny | May 12, 2008 9:54:38 AM
donny,
Is "Muttiny of The Bounty" a tale of the ship's dog?
Posted by: vidyohs | May 12, 2008 10:12:10 AM
vidyohs
You confused yourself HMS Bounty is not a Yacht, its clipper so they don't have doghouse although it could fulled with 101 dalmatians but it's not dog-ships :)
Posted by: donny | May 12, 2008 11:54:04 AM
Vidyohs,
I found this paragraph from Donny's link (first paragraph after the bullet points):
The incident that is most often cited as the act that set off the mutiny was Bligh's show of unusually bad temper over what he supposed was the theft of coconuts from a pile kept between two of the Bounty's guns. Indeed, his ranting words to his officers about the matter are characteristic, with "damned hound," "scoundrels," "thieves," and "rascals" predominating.
Doggone if you weren't correct about the muttiny.
Posted by: LowcountryJoe | May 12, 2008 12:04:48 PM
Let me see if I have this correct.
Coconut coping cur cost captain control?
Posted by: vidyohs | May 12, 2008 2:41:17 PM
Even pirates understand that the injured are due payments from the royalties and profits of the enterprise.
That puts pirates on a moral plane higher than the Texas legislature and its last two governors. Molly Ivins could make good use of pirate economics.
Posted by: Ed Darrell | May 12, 2008 3:55:22 PM
Even pirates understand that the injured are due payments from the royalties and profits of the enterprise.
You use the words "enterprise" and "profits" as though this were a legitiment business plan and form of commerce. Oh well, they'll pass as definitions. Funny, though, that modern day enterprises do not typically compensate their employees that have been injured at work, on the job, in the line of duty; why I've never heard of workman's comp insurance before!
That puts pirates on a moral plane higher than the Texas legislature and its last two governors.
You may wish to be more specific on what the Texas legislators have going on. But at least this comment of yours seems to address the 'moral planes' paralells of theft by individual anarchists and theft by the collective known as government. Whether the pirates are truly on a higher moral plan though is something we should debate further.
Molly Ivins could make good use of pirate economics.
Maybe we should let Ms. Ivins rest in peace instead.
Posted by: LowcountryJoe | May 12, 2008 5:10:49 PM
Since did sailors have the right to mutiny? Still that'd imply people have the right to forcibly oust the powers-that-be (generally referred to as 'Revolutionary Theory').
Posted by: Gil | May 12, 2008 8:23:42 PM
A better example of autonomously generated civil society is the Deadwood series. There is portrayed a motley bunch of (rapacious) settlers arriving at a place with no established law, indeed arriving illegally. Having come from areas where the law was practiced it became second nature to develop the institutions freely and with little dissent that more or less upheld the law and thereby allowed welath genrating activities to take place
Posted by: Alan | May 13, 2008 3:23:44 AM
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