Interesting Article on the Business Side of Piracy Options

[FlakJacket]

Behind The Business Plan Of Pirates Inc.

Piracy off the coast of Somalia has become an international problem — and an international business. Navy SEALS rescued an American merchant captain earlier this month after Somali pirates raided the Maersk Alabama as it was making its way around the Horn of Africa to deliver aid.

But the issues of criminality and the potential for violence aside, a closer look at the "business model" of piracy reveals that the plan makes economic sense.

A piracy operation begins, as with any other start-up business, with venture capital.

J. Peter Pham at James Madison University says piracy financiers are usually ethnic Somali businessmen who live outside the country and who typically call a relative in Somalia and suggest they launch a piracy business. The investor will offer $250,000 or more in seed money, while the relative goes shopping.

"You'll need some speedboats; you'll need some weapons; you also need some intelligence because you can't troll the Indian Ocean, a million square miles, looking for merchant vessels," says Pham, adding that the pirates also need food for the voyage — "a caterer."

Yes, a caterer.

"Think of it as everything you would need to go into the cruise ship business," Pham says. "Everything that you would need to run a cruise ship line, short of the entertainment, you need to run a piracy operation."

Article continued.

Thought I'd share it since it makes an interesting, and amusing, read that has a fair amount of relevance for Shadowrun.

[Tanegar]

The part about the pirates filling out timesheets is funny. It makes me think of a sitcom called The Pirates, in the vein of The Office. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[FlakJacket]

Well unlike the stereotypical mental images a lot of people have about carousing pirates of the Spanish Main of the latter half of the 16th and early 17th centuries thanks to Hollywood piracy nowadays really is a business at heart that operates on dollars and cents.

[Digital Heroin]

I find the timesheet concept to be a bit... unlikely. The pirates themselves are young men who are empowered by a triad of bravado, khat, and the almight AK not accountants. There is a level of sophistication in the planning, yes, but the businesspeople are resting comfortably ashore, shopping online for a Land Rover to give as incentive to the first kid over the rails of a newly grabbed ship, they're not out there on the ship itself for months on end. Still, the article does touch on the deeper reality of this. The desperate souls in the motor boats trying to board vessels and then fleeing from warships to no avail aren't the ones planning, or truly profiting off of this deal. It's the entrepreneaurs who operate with impunity because there is nothing remotely close to a stable government in Somalia. We can capture pirates all we like, but as long as there are people paying them, more will come along.

[Backgammon]

If you read enough international political news, you start to notice EVERYTHING is a business. Armies, militia, pirates, gangs, drug dealer... they all operate exactly the same as any business. The model varies, but you always have management, workers, capital and ROI.

We think people do things for ideals, for change, or just because they're "evil" and we don't question it further. Everything, EVERYTHING, starts with a guy looking to make a buck. The rest is just the propoganda fed down the ladder to hire cheap labour. People ask for less cash if you pay them in ideals.

[FlakJacket]

If you read enough international political news, you start to notice EVERYTHING is a business. Armies, militia, pirates, gangs, drug dealer... they all operate exactly the same as any business. The model varies, but you always have management, workers, capital and ROI.

We think people do things for ideals, for change, or just because they're "evil" and we don't question it further. Everything, EVERYTHING, starts with a guy looking to make a buck. The rest is just the propoganda fed down the ladder to hire cheap labour. People ask for less cash if you pay them in ideals.

Tell me about it. Apparently one of the major forces behind the end of apartheid in South Africa was the British mining company Consolidated Goldfields. It seems they were worried about what would happen to their gold mines if the then South African system of government collapsed in an uncontrolled manner since apartheid was obviously economically and politically doomed. So some of the senior executives, they apparently kept the board of directors and the senior management in South Africa out of the loop, funded a highly secret ongoing series of talks in the UK between representatives of the ANC and South African government which eventually led to apartheid being dismantled. An incredibly good result but at the end of the day it was merely a corporation protecting their assets against the possibly chaos if the South Africa had collapsed into anarchy. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)