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Somali Pirates Open Up a "Stock Exchange"
reginaldo writes to clue us that pirates in Somalia have opened up a cooperative in Haradheere, where investors can pay money or guns to help their favorite pirate crew for a share of the piracy profits. "'Four months ago, during the monsoon rains, we decided to set up this stock exchange. We started with 15 "maritime companies" and now we are hosting 72. Ten of them have so far been successful at hijacking,' Mohammed [a wealthy former pirate who took a Reuters reporter to the facility] said. ... Piracy investor Sahra Ibrahim, a 22-year-old divorcee, was lined up with others waiting for her cut of a ransom pay-out after one of the gangs freed a Spanish tuna fishing vessel. 'I am waiting for my share after I contributed a rocket-propelled grenade for the operation,' she said, adding that she got the weapon from her ex-husband in alimony. 'I am really happy and lucky. I have made $75,000 in only 38 days since I joined the "company."'"
Just a brief read of the article about the Dutch East India Company makes me wonder just how different the two really are.
Legitimacy as a company seems to be determined by how well you succeed and how long you've been around, more than your morals or ethics.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
I think you miss the point. They're not rogues; it's a lucrative business that is the most profitable job out there.
They've been doing this for a while, and by now there has to be an infrastructure supporting this. The pirates have to have ports, ships, backers.
It's just come out into the open.
Understand Africa; a couple of US$ will buy a Kalashnikov. A $75,000 payday is a fortune that is more than most Somalis will see in a lifetime.
You can bet this will succeed, until something better (more profitable) comes along.
Remember that archelogists pay the going exchange in gold to their workers if they find any artifacts. Same thing; shipping companies will pay this as long as it's cheaper than the alternatives. As long as the Somalis charge 95% of the other routes, it will prosper.
This has always puzzled me about lie-bertarians. To a dispassionate eye, the line appears to be so random and convenient only for the small-medium capitalists who incidentally provide the basis for this ideology to begin with. Why is it government function to protect only property, and human rights (which conveniently exclude the rights to basic food, shelter, job, and health care) ? And why the property is so sacred, of all the things a human being needs, such as "true" freedom (not just freedom to die from hunger), good health, or a family?
That’s an interesting thought. So the woman gets paid and then the next day is robbed and killed by a roving gang or a warlord’s hunt and terminate party. The other investors complain to the Somalian Stock Exchange that they don’t feel safe investing because their money can’t be guaranteed. Business suffers as a result until the Stock Exchange or some other business springs up and offers protection for that money. For only a few percentage points off the top they can keep you safe. And hey, now that you have all that money and you are safe you might want to spend it and get the good things in life. Right? So you start to make purchases and start to acquire things. New businesses have to come into being to supply you with the food and housing and coca cola that you lust for. Given a long enough time a middle class emerges that begins to demand not only protection but running water, electricity, communications, etc. It wouldn’t be the first time that a group of criminals have created a society.
Some insurance companies will not insure ships that have armed personnel aboard. They believe that it gives an incentive to fight, which may increase the damage to the vessel and result in additional (insured) lives being lost, increasing the payouts required if the ship escapes the pirates.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
I'm not sure that's the main thing stopping them. The cost of arming merchant ships would be far higher than just losing/ransoming a few of them--- piracy rates are extremely low as a percentage of total shipping, so small as to be more or less in the noise on companies' balance sheets. Arming ships has other risks, also; for example, one reason ships are typically kept unarmed is that there's a risk that armed crew would hijack their own ship for random/profit.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I am an importer in Ireland and my shipping invoices now have a "Gulf of Aden Surcharge" on them, so I pass this on to my customers and so on so the good news is that we ALL pay of the pirates.