Pirates mean serious business, Spencer Ackerman reports:
A maritime industry group crunches the numbers and finds that the measures companies and governments take to avoid and combat the piracy threat cost between $7 and $12 billion every year.
The One Earth Future Foundation’s Oceans Beyond Piracy project documents exploding costs in piracy-related actions (.pdf). Ransoms paid to Somali pirates totaled $238 million in 2010 — the worst year for piracy on record, according to the International Chamber of Commerce. The average payout from ransoming a hijacked ship was $5.4 million last year, up from just $150,000 in 2005. (Check out this analysis of the Somali pirate business model from WIRED.)
And ransoms aren’t even the lion’s share of piracy’s costs to global maritime commerce. Insuring ships passing near piracy-prone areas like the Gulf of Aden costs between $460 million and $3.2 billion. Naval forces’ presence to protect merchant presence costs another $2 billion. Regional economies lose up to $1.25 billion annually. Re-routing ships to less pirate-prone waters costs up to $3 billion. (Hat tip: GCaptain.)
When you consider that a .50-caliber machine gun only costs $14,000 or so, other ideas spring to mind…
Clearly this is a collective action problem. Getting rid of the problem could probably be done for less than 1 billion/year. For instance, if bounties of $100K were provided for the heads of Somali Pirates, that would pay for approximately 10k heads/year, which I’d wager would depress the problem down to insignificance. Clearly the market can figure out how to provide the heads of pirates for $100k each. In fact I bet the price of heads would in practice be far less and far less than 10k would be needed to stop the practice.
“Just hand over your wallet” is excellent advice for the individual being robbed, but not so excellent for society at large. In the past, any sea captain would have executed any pirates he could get his hands on. Now, not so much.
I favor a more privateer-like approach. Indeed, the governments of the world are the problem by putting obstacles in the way of a private solution while refusing to implement the historical military solution. But I bet that an approach like this could be brokered through a less suicidal and insane government that had no qualms about summarily executing pirates.
We might also take an economic approach, cloaked in militarism, rather than vice versa.
No, just kidding. Let’s kill ‘em all.
In the case of the eco-pirates dumping toxic waste washing up on beaches, destroying fishing, tourism and livelihoods, let’s definitely go for the .50 cal. Hoo-rah.
I can’t believe these ship owners haven’t put some machine guns or small cannon on their ships. Duh. One trained ex-military guy could bring a world of hurt to these clowns quickly before they get in AK range. Like the article says, an M2 can reach way out and turn their boats to Swiss cheese.
The pirate situation certainly fits the description of anarcho-tyranny.