Blackbeard economics: the surprising--and surprisingly tame--self-organization of pirates.
Reason › Vol. 41 Nbr. 2, June 2009
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The Invisible Hook: The Hidden Economics of Pirates - Book review
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Blackbeard economics: the surprising--and surprisingly tame--self-organization of pirates.
The Invisible Hook: The Hidden Economics of Pirates, by Peter T. Leeson, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 296 pages, $24.95
PIRATES ARE alluring to novelists and moviemakers because we know they really existed but don't know enough hard facts to get in the way of a good story. Contemporaneous newspaper accounts and other tales from the early 18th century are colorful but unreliable, tending toward propaganda. They report that these appalling yet appealing "Hell-hounds" marauded for the Jolly Roger, enslaved passing sailors, and tortured the innocent for fun. "Danger lurked in their very Smiles," one pirate chronicler reported. Pirates were "violators of all Laws, Humane and Divine." Portraying the freebooters in the worst possible light worked to...See the full content of this document
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