

Somali Pirate Economics - tc
http://www.wired.com/politics/security/magazine/17-07/ff_somali_pirates

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andreyf
This kind of deframes the reality of international over-fishing and dumping of
toxic waste in Somalia:

According to Nick Nuttall of the United Nations Environmental Programme,
"Somalia has been used as a dumping ground for hazardous waste starting in the
early 1990s, and continuing through the civil war there," and "European
companies found it to be very cheap to get rid of the waste, costing as little
as $2.50 a tonne, where waste disposal costs in Europe are something like
$1000 a tonne."

If my family started getting radiation sickness, that would add quite a bit of
emotional justification for piracy...

Src:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piracy_in_Somalia#Sovereignty_a...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piracy_in_Somalia#Sovereignty_and_environmental_protection)

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tokenadult
Both issues are symptoms of a country without effective governance.

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nopassrecover
Both issues are symptoms of an inadequate international system of governance.
If the United Nations had any power it would have stepped in diplomatically to
prevent the dumping and stepped in militarily to prevent the piracy.

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philwelch
It's interesting that even pirates need outside investment, rather than simply
being able to bootstrap. This need is significant, given the 50% cut going to
financiers.

It's also interesting that piracy is still low enough of a cost that it
doesn't justify rerouting ships, landing marines, or any of the other
traditional responses to piracy.

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pbhj
Isn't the traditional response to post a few blokes with guns, big guns, and
attempt to blow any pirates out of the water? Aren't ship's crew using guns
for protection?

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philwelch
You'd think so. There must be legal issues with this approach, since you'd
have to have deck-mounted machine guns to have much chance. Or maybe, as with
everything else described in this article, deck-mounted machine guns wouldn't
have enough cost-benefit.

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__
Also, weapons on merchant ships can be taken by the pirates and used in future
attacks. So unless the weapons allow the crew to consistently prevent
hijackings, they're just increasing the pirates' revenue.

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wglb
Anyone else get "video unavailable" on the video?

