It’s disturbing and interesting to listen to conversations like this one on piracy and realize what a, well, business it is:
How much does it cost to outfit a pirate mission?
A single mission with 12 armed men and boats costs a little over $30,000. But a successful investor has to dispatch at least three or four missions to get lucky once.
How are the pirates organized? (Are there pirate leaders, financiers, and specialists?)
The financiers are the most important since they organize and plan the big shot operations and are able to pay running cost[s]. Financiers always need to forge deals with traders, land cruiser owners, translators, business people to keep the supplies flowing during operations and manage the logistics. There is a long supply chain involved in every hijacking.
I was gonna make a smartass comment about how I wonder if there’s a mutual fund that buys stakes in pirate hijackings. But then I realized that it’s not really a smartass comment because in a world as highly-connected as this one, we all have a presence in this economic chain one way or another.
But what is most striking, I think, is how good an illustration this is of how when people are fucked, poor, and hopeless, they usually aren’t willing to just sit there quietly and rot. More and more, they make their problems into our problems, and no amount of blasting them into bolivion will make it go away.