The Economics of Pirate Tolerance

"The Invisible Hook: The Economics of Pirate Tolerance," is now available, here.

Abstract: Can criminal profit-seeking generate socially desirable results? This paper investigates this question by examining the economics of pirate tolerance. At a time when British merchant ships treated black slaves as slaves, some pirate ships integrated black bondsmen into their crews as full-fledged, free members. Enlightened notions about equality did not produce pirate tolerance, however. I argue that self-interest seeking in the context of the criminally-determined costs and benefits of pirate slavery was responsible for pirates' progressive racial practices. Analogous to Adam Smith's invisible hand, whereby legitimate persons' self-interest seeking can generate socially desirable outcomes, among pirates there was an "invisible hook," whereby criminal self-interest seeking produced a socially desirable outcome in the form of racial tolerance.

Coming soon: "The Calculus of Piratical Consent: Criminal Foundations of Constitutional Democracy"