Pirate Hunting

[Lunar]

Hey, when you've got anarchy...

http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_3374702.html

Luxury ocean liners in Russia are offering pirate hunting cruises aboard armed private yachts off the Somali coast.

Wealthy punters pay £3,500 per day to patrol the most dangerous waters in the world hoping to be attacked by raiders.

When attacked, they retaliate with grenade launchers, machine guns and rocket launchers, reports Austrian business paper Wirtschaftsblatt.

Passengers, who can pay an extra £5 a day for an AK-47 machine gun and £7 for 100 rounds of ammo, are also protected by a squad of ex special forces troops.

The yachts travel from Djibouti in Somalia to Mombasa in Kenya.

The ships deliberately cruise close to the coast at a speed of just five nautical miles in an attempt to attract the interest of pirates.

"They are worse than the pirates," said Russian yachtsman Vladimir Mironov. "At least the pirates have the decency to take hostages, these people are just paying to commit murder," he continued.

[Sbane]

The market at work. I love it.

[Sensei]

Evil people performing a net positive for the world. Odd.

[??????????]

Evil people performing a net positive for the world. Odd.

Nah, it's pretty morally abhorrent.

[phk]

FF

[Lunar]

The market at work. I love it.

That's not really the market at work, just lawlessness. 

I believe it would be illegal in the United States to walk around a rough neighborhood with a gun pretending to be drunk (and five of your ex-soldier buddies around the corner) in order to bait a mugger so you all can murder said mugger.

[dead0man]

The market at work. I love it.

That's not really the market at work, just lawlessness. 

I believe it would be illegal in the United States to walk around a rough neighborhood with a gun pretending to be drunk (and five of your ex-soldier buddies around the corner) in order to bait a mugger so you all can murder said mugger.

Also very dangerous with a far greater chance to get an innocent in the cross fire than out in the middle of nowhere with the pirates.

Of course it's wrong, but like all of you, I'm not going to do anything to stop it from happening.  When bad guys kill each other with little chance of hurting nonbad guys, I tend to look at it as a positive.  Especially when they conveniently do it in international waters.


(yes, I understand not everybody thinks the pirates are "bad guys")

[Sbane]

The market at work. I love it.

That's not really the market at work, just lawlessness. 

I believe it would be illegal in the United States to walk around a rough neighborhood with a gun pretending to be drunk (and five of your ex-soldier buddies around the corner) in order to bait a mugger so you all can murder said mugger.

It's a market because there is obviously a demand for the "service" provided by these cruises. I agree that it shouldn't be allowed but that doesn't mean its not a market. I am sure there are people out there who would love to kill muggers  as you described, and they would be willing to pay if somebody needed to facilitate it for them which is the role being played by these cruises. Yet they can't due to laws which are enforced here in America while there is no law in international waters/Somalia.

[Jacobtm]

It's a market because there is obviously a demand for the "service" provided by these cruises.

You're right that this is a market at work, but to use this as an indictment of Capitalism or market-based societies is intellectually dishonest. The only ways markets and capitalism work is in the context of a law-abiding society, one in which sport killings is recognized as abhorrent.

Not everything should be up for sale, and human life is first on that list. Such problems don't exist in the realms of consumer goods, where markets work quite well.

[Sbane]

It's a market because there is obviously a demand for the "service" provided by these cruises.

You're right that this is a market at work, but to use this as an indictment of Capitalism or market-based societies is intellectually dishonest. The only ways markets and capitalism work is in the context of a law-abiding society, one in which sport killings is recognized as abhorrent.

Not everything should be up for sale, and human life is first on that list. Such problems don't exist in the realms of consumer goods, where markets work quite well.

I wasn't trying to use this as an indictment of capitalism, just making an observation.