The Invisible Hook

Peter T. Leeson recently discussed his new book, The Invisible Hook: The Hidden Economics of Pirates. (We're having some problems putting the video on our blog, but it is available here.)

The title's witty, and pirates may have acted in accordance with economic intentions that resulted in self governance, but this self governance simply enabled more efficient violent economic predation. It's also interesting to note how pirates spent their profits. In Empire of Blue Water, Stephen Talty describes how pirates spent liberal sums on alcohol and whores: "L'Ollonais' men were reported to have blown through 260,000 pieces of eight or $13.5 million in three short weeks after one of their expeditions 'having spent it all in things of little value, or at play either cards or dice" (138). Pirates may have had their social contracts on the ship, but Talty goes on to describe how, when they got back to shore, they lived in a virtual state of anarchy, blowing all of their hard earned profit on alcohol and women of questionable repute, until they were too broke to survive and needed to go back out to sea to earn more money: "He dealt only in immediate gratifications. It was almost as if the pirate code had short-circuited his ability to think of a regular life outside it" (139).

None of this is intended to directly refute Leeson's work (which we find very interesting); we merely question the implication that pirates are deserving of praise for their self-regulated maritime crimes.