Where’s a Good Pirate When You Need One?

One would think that, next to Wall Street bankers, stockbrokers, and other Ponzi schemers, pirates would worship the theme “Greed is good.” But a New Yorker article by James Surowiecki is about Peter Leeson’s premise that pirates developed codes of ethics and conduct that served them well. Here was a group of thieves scheming and cooperating for profit, just like Goldman-Sachs, Bank of America, and Citibank. But it seems the MBAs and CEOs serving the banks don’t know the meaning of ethics and conduct. Leeson, an economist at George Mason University, sheds new light on pirate “democracy.” It’s too bad the dens of thieves on Wall Street have no pirate CEOs.

Pirates have been around since ships sailed on water—and some still operate off the coasts of East Africa, Liechtenstein, and Monaco. But the 18th century pirate bubble was the growth period for grappling entrepreneurs. Up to 2,000 pirates based mainly in the Bahamas and Caribbean captured almost 2,500 merchant ships stuffed with Spanish gold and other riches of the New World.

There were so many pirate ships operating in these restricted waters that the “buccaneers,” named after a wooden frame used by the Carib Indians to smoke and cure wild boar and cattle, came up with the “Custom of the Coast,” the first pirate code of ethics.

Henry Morgan, the first CEO of a major pirate organization, realized that he, like many a Wall Street banker, did not have many choir boys in his pirate crews, so he developed specific agreements about the sharing of ill-gotten goods so that the crews would not kill him or fight among themselves. As the leader, provider, and provisioner of the pirate ships, Morgan’s share was a hundredth part of the total haul when he organized over 2,000 men and many ships to raid and rape Panama in the early part of the 18th century. Each ship captain was due eight shares and each crewman one share. “Professional men” such as surgeons, carpenters and other specialists were paid regular salaries. A surgeon received 200 pesos and a carpenter 100 pesos per raid.

Pirate Ships Were Often Islands of Democracy Off Autocratic Lands

There were even incentive payments for heroic acts—50 pesos to anyone who captured a ship’s flag, five pesos to a crew member who volunteered to throw grenades into an enemy’s fort. Compensation for injuries was included in the agreement. One eye lost was worth 100 pesos. Both legs lost was worth 1,500 pesos.

If crew members were caught pilfering anything aboard ship they were immediately “marooned” on the closest island. Some ships banned gambling, shipboard romances (male or female), and often restricted late-night drinking on deck. Wine, woman or boy, and song did not necessarily a happy ship make.

Very few pirate captains kept slaves aboard ship because they might betray the ship in a crucial spot. In fact, blacks made up as much as one-third of the crew on many ships. They were treated as regular crew members, bearing arms and getting their share of the booty.

Pirate captains often joined together for raids on shipping and seaports so they soon sensed the importance of the elements of shipboard democracy. Most ships were ruled by common councils instead of dictatorial and autocratic captains. All crew members who had signed the “code of ethics” could vote.

Captains were sometimes elected by common councils. Only when the ship was fighting or fleeing could the captain make decisions on his own. The crew could immediately term-limit him if they thought he was cowardly or too cruel.

The quartermaster was the second most powerful person aboard ship. He was in charge of the food, booty, and administered minor punishments for indiscretions. Actually, when merchant ships were captured by pirates, the merchant crews were often quite happy to join the pirates because the shares were more than they could make in a year aboard a merchant ship or navy ship.

Pirate Democracy and Our Present Corporate Fascism

Leeson became interested in how pirates controlled their destinies because everything they did was basically outside the law while they ran “the most sophisticated and successful criminal organizations in history.”

Bob Dylan famously sang “To live outside the law you must be honest.” That line makes a lot of sense. Pirate ships were governed by simple “constitutions” that outlined the duties and responsibilities of everyone on board . Merchant and Navy ships were governed by rules established by the powerful and supported by the more powerful. But Royal Navy ship captains often ate full rations while their crews starved, flogged seamen unmercifully, and used leg irons indiscriminately. Pirate crew members were generally treated much better.

I never thought that I would use the structure of pirate rule to discuss why our “democracy” has made such a mess of things at the state and national level, whether in governing or in economics. When Bill Clinton began his presidential campaign in 1991 he made this statement: “The Reagan-Bush years have exalted private gain over public obligation, special interests over the common good, wealth and fame over work and family. The 1980’s ushered in a Gilded Age of greed and selfishness, of irresponsibility and excess, and of neglect.” These are things a pirate CEO would never have done because he would have been voted out of his position immediately.

Pirate captains did not have fixed terms. They would not have been allowed to change the structure and the share amounts their crew had signed onto when they joined the criminal enterprise. Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush changed the share amounts and the working papers as soon as they were elected. The rich got much richer from having their shares increased while the “crew members” of society got screwed. The trickle-down theory of wealth never worked, but the pissing out of the tent came in an economic tsunami on the poor and the middle class. Can you imagine a pirate ship crew signing on to privation, loneliness, and threats of hanging for a “maybe you’ll get something?”

Keelhauling Was Convincing Punishment for Both Captains And Crew

The fact that middle-class incomes did not increase during the Reagan-Bush years can be directly related to the unholy alliance of corporate and governmental power to serve investors, business, and personal interests. In addition to corporate fascism, the right wing bamboozled the Christian Right into believing that lobbyists, CEOs, and conservative politicians were not the ones dumped out in the streets from the temple by Christ.

If pirate captains had treated their crews like the Reagan-Bush administrations treated the poor and the middle-class, they would have been keelhauled by the crews. The practice of keelhauling often makes Great Deciders like Reagan and Bush change what they had decided. In keelhauling a rope is passed beneath the ship so it is under the middle. Then the keelhaulee is tied to the rope with another loose line and pulled under the ship. Survival often depends on how urgently the crew pulls on the rope. Ship bottoms are often covered with barnacles. Barnacles have very sharp edges. If the keelhaulee survives his underwater journey he often loses skin and flesh from being scraped by barnacles. Salt water, of course, speeds the recovery of torn flesh.

If Only Business and Government Had Been Run by Pirates

If pirate captains cheated or used the cat-o-nine tails excessively on their crews, they ended up keelhauled, dead, or given a small boat to sail thousands of miles, like Captain Bligh of the Royal Navy. Bligh had very few supporters when his quartermaster Fletcher Christian and a majority of his crew mutinied on the H.M.S. Bounty.

I think it’s at least amusing to wonder if the United States and most of its individual states would be in such financial distress if Henry Morgan, Edward Teach (Blackbeard), and other “good” pirates had been given political power. Some of these pirate captains were “gentlemen.” Stede Bonnet spent his inheritance equipping a pirate ship and then sailed the seas in a fancy dressing gown surrounded by a huge library in his captain’s cabin. Pirate captain Samuel Bellamy thought of himself as the “Robin Hood of The Seas” by damning those meek enough “to be governed by laws which rich men have made.” Anne Bonny and Mary Reed were two famous female pirates who fought in men’s clothes and later avoided hanging as pirates by pleading pregnancies.

Would California Be in Such a Mess if It Were Governed by Pirates?

Most rational economists and political scientists have now reasoned that rich California, home of Hollywood and Beverly Hills mansions, the Silicon Valley of the computer hardware and software industries, the biggest seaports in the United States, and 38 million hustlers of one kind or another, is not governable because the corporate-fascist-Reagan three-legged stool broke the third leg –- the poor and the middle-class.

Before Reagan and his corporate thieves garnered control of California economics and government, California led the United States in K-12 and university education, transportation, public services, agriculture, and many other areas. The fact is that in just three decades California has ended up at the bottom of the states with a $26 billion deficit and crowded prisons under federal court orders.

As Edward Abbey put it, “There is science, logic, reason; there is thought verified by experience. And then there is California.” Now it needs serious pirates to bring it around.

California has 12 percent unemployment. Los Angeles County has a poverty rate of 20 percent scattered among its multi-million dollar estates. Thousands of California teachers were recently fired, so the state is nudging Mississippi out of 50th place in educational rankings. The California college and university system has suspended admissions for 2010. No more room. State parks have been closed by the dozen while the state’s bond rating is just above junk level. One in four capsized mortgages in the U.S. are in California and personal bankruptcies are up 75 percent.

Back in 1978 Reagan’s conservative Republican backers pushed through Proposition 13 which capped property taxes and forced the legislature to pass budgets and tax reform with two-third majorities. Later, Reagan tripled the national debt in eight years. Described as “an amiable dunce” by Clark Clifford, his comment “the homeless preferred to live outside” was the hallmark of his state and federal administrations. When he was elected president in 1976 our savings rate was 12 percent. By 1990 it was reduced to six percent. California has not been governable since Reagan and has become the state governed by propositions and initiatives. California’s constitution has over 500 amendments and is as heavy as War And Peace.

A home purchased in 1980 for $300,000 is still taxed at that level if it hasn’t changed hands, although its value may have sextupled in 29 years. A favorite story of Warren Buffet’s concerns a vacation home he bought in California years ago which has increased in value to about $4 million today. But he pays less in California property taxes because of Prop 13 than he does on a home valued at $300,000 in Omaha, Nebraska. No wonder California needs a good pirate captain who knows how to treat a crew instead of a governor who at one time bought a dozen Hummers for lack of better things to do.

C.S. Lewis said about leadership: “The greatest evil is not done in those sordid dens of evil Dickens loved to paint but….in clean, carpeted, warmed, well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices.” I think it’s funny that pirate captains wearing eye patches and broadswords strutting on the poop decks of marauders were more honest than guys in $2,000 suits and Gucci boots sitting on their asses in K Street and Congressional offices signing bribery checks.

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