Capitalism in its wonderful natural form.

Written By: - Date published: 7:55 pm, December 7th, 2009 - 29 comments
Categories: act, auckland supercity, Satire - Tags:

Natural Free Enterprise

Natural Free Enterprise

Following on from our report earlier this year about ideal places for libertarians to go, it appears that we are now seeing capitalism in its wonderful Ayn Rand style libertarian idealized form. Somali ‘maritime companies” have setup a stock exchange to help incubate free enterprise in its natural form. From Reuters we have this report.

HARADHEERE, Somalia (Reuters) – In Somalia’s main pirate lair of Haradheere, the sea gangs have set up a cooperative to fund their hijackings offshore, a sort of stock exchange meets criminal syndicate.

This is how capitalism naturally starts. A natural resource is discovered for risky exploitation, and the risk is shared throughout the wider community (before the inevitable bubble collapse). It allows successful and even unsuccessful entrepreneurs to offload offer their businesses complete with priceless customer goodwill to others. As a former pirate maritime entrepreneur explains:

“Four months ago, during the monsoon rains, we decided to set up this stock exchange. We started with 15 ‘maritime companies’ and now we are hosting 72. Ten of them have so far been successful at hijacking,” Mohammed said.

“The shares are open to all and everybody can take part, whether personally at sea or on land by providing cash, weapons or useful materials … we’ve made piracy a community activity.”

Such a public spirited benefactor of his fellow citizens. Reminds me of those wonderful people who fund support the Act party in their similar public spirited neo-libertarian formation of the council-controlled organizations (CCOs) to provide a natural resource for pirates to plunder managers to run efficiently.

Lets hope that the CCOs in Auckland give as many benefits to Aucklanders as the stock exchange is giving in Somalia:

The administration has no influence in Haradheere — where a senior local official said piracy paid for almost everything.

“Piracy-related business has become the main profitable economic activity in our area and as locals we depend on their output,” said Mohamed Adam, the town’s deputy security officer.

“The district gets a percentage of every ransom from ships that have been released, and that goes on public infrastructure, including our hospital and our public schools.”

Of course we Aucklanders already own the resources that Act is pirating running efficiently. So we’d have to assume that stripping the assets will make them even more profitable for someone long term. We can only hope that Aucklanders are amongst them.

But who can argue with this happy result and example of how people can better themselves through positive thinking and hard work. Sahra didn’t let adversity constrain her (and is an inspiration to us all)…

Piracy investor Sahra Ibrahim, a 22-year-old divorcee, was lined up with others waiting for her cut of a ransom pay-out after one of the gangs freed a Spanish tuna fishing vessel.

“I am waiting for my share after I contributed a rocket-propelled grenade for the operation,” she said, adding that she got the weapon from her ex-husband in alimony.

“I am really happy and lucky. I have made $75,000 in only 38 days since I joined the ‘company’.”

Of course there are probably some anti-capitalist, anti-free-enterprise wimps who would point at some losers from this new enterprise – like the crews, customers, insurers and owners of the ships. But the same wimps would disagree with trafficking in human slaves, selling heroin to children, or asset stripping Auckland. Clearly not fans of Ayn Rand, which means that they are obviously losers by philosophy.

Here is the video from earlier this year that seems almost prescient.

We can just hope that all libertarian and neo-libertarians go to this free-enterprise stateless nirvana. It will leave us richer.

hat-tip: The Strategist

29 comments on “Capitalism in its wonderful natural form. ”

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  1. Brett Dale 1
    7 December 2009 at 9:05 pm

    Your using Somalia is an example of Capitalism???

    Cripes.

    Why not use Hone as an example of a decent humanbeing?

    • Gosman 1.1
      8 December 2009 at 6:01 am

      Or like using Zimbabwe as an example of Socialism. Then again that isn’t such a bad idea.

    • travellerev 1.2
      8 December 2009 at 6:17 am

      Actually compared to Bill English and Rodney Hide he is.

      If push comes to shove I’ll happily throw my lot in with Hone rather than the Pakeha white rich male leadership and their token female goofers.

      At least he is man enough to pay for his wifes travels out of his own pocket while those two hide behind their families to rip us off.

  2. lprent 2
    7 December 2009 at 9:12 pm

    Did you read the Reuters link? It is pretty clear that a very natural form of capitalism, without the Unnatural constraints of the state are in operation there.

    Fits well into the act mindset

    • MikeE 2.1
      8 December 2009 at 10:03 am

      Ideal forms of capitalism are free from “force and fraud” tell me how on earth a pirate capital which involves using physical force to steal meets this description…

      You are deliberately getting mixed up between anarchism and libertarianism.

      even libertarians support a state for law and order/defense/protection of contract reasons.

      • lprent 2.1.1
        8 December 2009 at 11:30 am

        It usually seems to figure pretty low on their priorities when they’re attacking those very institutions.

        Listening to them waffle usually gives the distinct impression that they’d like no controls constraining them. If they are like Act, they just want controls on everyone else to reduce their competition – especially in the legal area.

  3. Danyl Mclauchlan 3
    7 December 2009 at 9:13 pm

    There is actually a pirate in Atlas Shrugged: Ragnar Danneskjöld sails the world stealing money from governments and giving it to rich people. He is one of the principle heroes of the novel (I am not kidding) and gives a stirring speech denouncing Robin Hood.

  4. outofbed 4
    7 December 2009 at 9:27 pm

    Capitalism in its wonderful natural form – Socialism is BAD
    http://www.youtube.com/user/greenman3610#p/f/12/SwZl2Hyw-sk

  5. Quoth the Raven 5
    7 December 2009 at 9:50 pm

    Of course one of the tenets of capitalism (and if you can find a good definition of capitalism than you’re doing better than me) is private property and pirates don’t respect private property. And Ayn Rand thought little of libertarians:

    Because Libertarians are a monstrous, disgusting bunch of people: they plagiarize my ideas when that fits their purpose, and they denounce me in a more vicious manner than any communist publication, when that fits their purpose. They are lower than any pragmatists, and what they hold against Objectivism is morality. They’d like to have an amoral political program.

    • Wayne 5.1
      7 December 2009 at 10:40 pm

      How do you think private property is created in the first place?

    • lprent 5.2
      7 December 2009 at 11:32 pm

      QTR: Yeah, but I can’t see the difference between them. For that matter I can’t see much difference for most of the creeds of the left, or the various creeds of the green, or what in the hell the religious see to argue about.

      I’m pretty damn pragmatic at looking at what works.

      I tend towards the left because many if not most of the right seem to tend towards stupidity or toy fetishes. Both lead to short-term thinking which is about as useless for long-term development as arguing about creeds.

    • Quoth the Raven 5.3
      7 December 2009 at 11:38 pm

      Wayne – You could separate it into how property rights came about and how different claims to property have come about. How property rights emerged I don’t know (property rights theory is a sticky complex subject I have little motivaion to study in any great depth). I’m sure you can find something on the hows and whys of human communities coming to this arrangment.
      Maybe what you want to say is that property came about by theft. I have no doubt that many claims to property have origins in acts of theft like a corpations property that came from the state’s theft of land through imminent domain or the colonial theft of indigenous land etc. The fact that some claims to property may have their origins in theft doesn’t mean that property just is theft. You know the guy who said “property is theft” also said “property is liberty” and “property is immpossible” – See this>

      • Daveo 5.3.1
        8 December 2009 at 11:51 am

        How property rights emerged I don’t know (property rights theory is a sticky complex subject I have little motivaion to study in any great depth).

        You should probably look into this. All those Mises institute articles you link to and your objections to ‘forcing’ businesses to do this or that because it infringes on their property rights is based on a flawed right-wing theory of property.

        Here’s a good place to start: http://www.philosophyetc.net/2006/05/property-is-unnatural.html

        • Quoth the Raven 5.3.1.1
          8 December 2009 at 1:18 pm

          Daveo – You’re being presumptuous again. I’m no propertarian. Of course property isn’t natural its an artificial human arrangement. What you think that article is supposed to inform me of that I’m not already aware of I don’t know. I linked above to a discussion of Proudhon why you’d think I’m a propertarian I don’t know. It’s clear to me your not interested in any meaningful engagement on libertarian ideas and would rather strawman and make your arguments from ignorance. The libertarian site I linked to above has an article on propertarianism: Absolutist Propertarianism Dissolves All Rights
          The mises.org articles are interesting articles on the folly of this or that government interference in the market or the fallacious thinking of keynesians or interesting bits of american history – read them you might actually learn a thing or two. Like this interesting article: The Goldwater Anomaly I don’t know that I’ve linked to any article on property rights unless it’s one of their numerous articles opposed to intellectual property. I read socialist websites too unlike narrow minded social democrats I can find interest in pieces from across the political spectrum.

        • Quoth the Raven 5.3.1.2
          8 December 2009 at 7:22 pm

          That blog has an interesting new article on this very topic:

          An analogy to a more small-scale context may drive the point home. For the sake of argument, let’s presume that I legitimately own a home. Would it make sense for me to claim that by virtue of the fact that I own my home, anyone that visits must do literally whatever I tell them, and that I am justified in doing whatever I want to anyone that happens to occupy it at any given moment? Such a claim would be laughed out of court as a ridiculous propertarian justification for slavery and murder. But the state is just a large-scale embodyment of this. The members of the political class constitute the defacto “owners” of the territory that the state has jurisdiction over, and at the end of the day they have ultimate authority over the lives of everyone else within the territory. Asking “who is the legitimate owner?” isn’t enough. One has to ask “what kind of authority should an owner really have?”.

          So how propertarian are statists 😯

    • travellerev 5.4
      8 December 2009 at 6:23 am

      Funny how the dispossesed always have to respect the right to private property when it’s the robber barons “private” property and not the other way around.

      One of the issues the Somalian pirates have with the West is that we without paying or respecting the local population robbed their seas of their fish leaving them without a source of income or food.

      It’s basically just another the West robbes an indigenous people of their resources and wealth and cry foul when they start to fight back.

      • lukas 5.4.1
        8 December 2009 at 8:15 am

        do you cry yourself to sleep at night because you are white Trav?

        • travellerev 5.4.1.1
          8 December 2009 at 8:46 am

          Oh hi Lucas,

          I was almost afraid Lucas, I had lost one of my most faithful trolls what with you not trolling me when I announced Richard Gage’s visit in the last couple of weeks but here you are. Save and sound. Thank god.

          I think you’ll find there are plenty of “white” people disgusted with the policies of the the big corporate cabals and their distructive habits.

          • lukas 5.4.1.1.1
            8 December 2009 at 9:01 am

            It would seem that your ‘k’ key is still broken, want me to send you a new keyboard?

            Save and sound? not so much, we are in expansion mode so not that much saving going on. I am safe and sound though, and I do thank God for that 🙂

            I would have paid attention to Dick Gage, but ran out of tin foil so was too scared to go near him sorry.

  6. vto 6
    7 December 2009 at 10:32 pm

    ha ha that is classic.

    But lprent you mix up the issues as often (you must let politics go sometimes). It seems a perfect exmple of how capitalism can work. The problem is that you mix it up with morality and laws.

    Separate them, define them, control them, and you have a very effective means of accomplishing all manner of goodness.

    I can’t believe you cannot see …

    • lprent 6.1
      7 December 2009 at 11:40 pm

      I do. However ‘capitalism’ has the attention span of a kitten chasing a piece of string (been babysitting rockys kitten this weekend).

      A 5 year ‘plan’ is about as far as companies can think ahead in even broad terms – and that is if they are enlightened.. Sure they say that they have a broad long-term plans. However that gets new-broomed as regularly as the management cycles. That was pretty damn clear when I was working in corporates and when I looked at the research 20 odd years ago when I did an MBA.

      Now think of it. Parents regularly think a lot further ahead than that. Raising children demands it. Education systems, health systems, superannuation etc must all look ahead for much longer.

      Unfortunately so does running natural infrastructure monopolies, like these CCOs, because they have more than one objective. Think of the public health implications of a water CCO, and then think of them getting the scattered brained coherence of a typical corporate chasing short-term profits. All of the efficiency come from planning long-term.

      It really doesn’t work – look at the power infrastructure.

      I understand the arguments. But the issue is that free markets are good at short-term ‘planning’ and response. Even then they are only really effective when they don’t have natural monopolies. Think Telecom for instance..

      Perhaps you need to think a bit more clearly about the relative advantages both ways.

      Incidentally did you notice the categories.

      • vto 6.1.1
        7 December 2009 at 11:57 pm

        true that in part. and that is why it needs to be separated and controlled. I think most wise capitalists recognise its limitations. but dont throw the baby out with the bathwater (or kitty out with the kitty litter). the natural human forces that drive capitalism drive. simple. make use of it.

        A bit like that old adage about the devil making work for idle hands. Put it to good use.

        The truth in truisms seems to be oft exposed in extreme situations. As your example.

        btw, most people think way beyond a 5 year time frame. Unless they have no stake in their industry.

  7. travellerev 7
    8 December 2009 at 5:53 am

    Pirate, robber baron or Robber baron what’s the dif.

    What’s lacking is not the constraint of Goverment but strong morals and a desire to live in peace and within your means and the opportunity to do so without being robbed or bullied.

    Corrupt and greedy leadership does not help and that is why they invented the Guillotine. I dont think I have to give any local examples but English and Hide come to mind.

    This is what Cheri Blair had to say in defence of her ever expanding need for more money as her husband is racking it in in Azerbadjian, meeting with faraway criminals and Ooh oops prince Edward, another scion of a well known robber baron family.

  8. Bill 8
    8 December 2009 at 11:56 am

    Isn’t it capitalism in it’s wonderful ‘natural’ form that brought the hell-zone that is Somalia into being?

    Unrestricted foreign factory fishing and sea dumping wiping out traditional means of securing a livelihood etc? (Let’s leave aside the civil war and the historical reasons for the Sudan, Ethiopia and Somalia being awash with weaponry.)

    Anyway.

    Forming co-operatives and using ransom monies for community projects seems like an exercise in self empowerment to me. If capitalism hadn’t ravished the place in the first instance then none of this pirate stuff would be happening.