But Now You Know

Stopping Piracy on the High Seas

Now that a ship of the evil, but highly influential, Saudi tyranny has been hijacked by pirates, suddenly the long-standing problem of piracy in the Indian ocean is headline news. 

Crackpot neocons like Michael Savage, and his imitator Mark Levin, are calling for the US Navy to run around destroying boats and slaughtering people suspected of piracy.

Socialists/Liberals are proposing the normal, faux-pacifist solutions of more international committees and taxpayer funding to bureaucratically consider the problem, and more handouts, and of course trying to force an authoritarian central government on Somalia, sort of a reverse-Iraq, nation-destroying project.

But the real solution is, as usual, not one of more governmental intrusion, but one of more individual liberty and responsibility:

Allow private craft to be armed.

Now, most people probably don’t realize this, but there are complete bans on boats or ships carrying defenses in most nations where you might come to port. These leave craft largely helpless against piracy, even though the ban on defense has no practical benefit.

Imagine how easy it would actually have been for a ship the size of an oil tanker to defend itself, against pirates in a speedboat, armed with rifles and grenades. Especially considering the expenditure that would be justified by the value of its cargo. How good a defense could YOU afford, if you were shipping $100,000,000 worth of oil?

The pirates reportedly captured the supertanker with rifles and grenades, in a speedboat. Imagine if the tanker were legally allowed to defend itself...

Allowing/encouraging craft to defend themselves would have the added benefit of making it safer for any craft to NOT defend itself. Even pacifists, who did not arm their boats, would be protected, because any potential pirates could not know whether the boat is armed, or not. So ALL people would be safer, if only SOME would arm themselves well enough to make piracy too dangerous.

This is, of course, the story of Big Brotherment mentality, where the governments constantly arm themselves better, but tell the individuals that arming yourself is bad…and yet fail to protect the disarmed people WITH the government’s massive weaponry.

Meanwhile, of course, criminals arm themselves BETTER, because of the disarmed masses. What is easy to buy on the black market is whatever desirable thing is most wrongfully banned by a government.

Even a small boat could take out an attacker with a single shot…and yet, of course, pirates would not profit if THEY took out victims with a single shot. You don’t make any money from ransom, nor gain any loot, if you sink your target. 

Therefore, if ships were allowed to defend themselves, there would BE no pirates, because it would be far more risky, with modern weaponry, than profitable.

Problem actually solved. 

If, instead, we have government deal with the problem of piracy…well, when’s the last time government actually solved a problem? Actually fixed the thing they claimed to be fighting, so that the problem was simply gone, and the powers usurped to deal with it were returned to the people?

Has that ever happened?

Let’s go with liberty, letting ships defend themselves, instead of bureaucracy, spending billions to probably make the problem worse.

December 4, 2008 Posted by kazvorpal | International, Politics | disarmament, freedom, india, indian ocean, liberty, navy, oil tanker, pacifism, piracy, socialism, somalia, sudan, united states, weapons | 3 Comments