The Economics of Piracy

Duckk wrote:Technically, Gustav Anderman was a mercenary, not a pirate. He had more legitimacy in setting up as an actual nation than, say, Andre Warnecke.

The one significant difference between Gustav's and Andre's attempts at forming their nations is in what they did after siezing control. When you go to work fixing the problems causing your new subjects to suffer from starvation you tend to be seen more favorably than someone who instead treats the people like playthings.

Had Gustav been as much of a dirtbag as Andre his status as a mercenary would be treated as a serious negative, not as something granting some measure of legitimacy.

In Duckk's analogy, the mob boss is presumably smart enough to know that performing the job is going to put a price on the guilty party's head unlike any other ... and things like a lack of an extradition treaty won't protect him. At best, he'll end up like Whitey Bolger.

The guys actually doing the job will probably realize the exact same thing - and they're going to be very suspicious about anything and everything involved.



In the Honorverse, Gunboat diplomacy is still an incredibly real thing. Only, this time, when they find somebody involved, it's going to be at minimum a squadron of battlecruisers, if not superdreadnoughts (whatever level of force you used in your hit is going to be responded to with massive overkill) and escorts.
At least, nowadays. Basically, whomever you hit is going to do their very best to make an example out of you, your accomplices, and anyone trying to protect you. Probably anyone involved in the suppression of piracy would be interested in catching and making an example out of you.
Remember the Manticoran response to Masada? Something like that. Or the Manticoran response to what happened to Saganami? Or what should have been the Manticoran response when Erewhon lost a ship to the Mesa-backed pirates before they split off from the Manticoran Alliance - and what would have been the Manticoran (and/or Grayson) response had Gauntlet been destroyed?


Even the Janacek Admiralty - even the High Ridge version - would not have assigned something so important to a Pavel Young or Elvis Santino type. Young was sent to Basilisk when it was the dumping ground of the RMN - even with all his father's political connections protecting him. Frankly, without that massive degree of political cover, he would never have made List. They might not have assigned it to an Honor Harrington or a White Haven, but they would have assigned it to an O'Malley or a Kusak. Or maybe just an Oversteegen.
The Sollies, on the other hand, would have a SD squadron and escorts riding shotgun.




It's entirely possible that big scores have been made in the past, sure. But not anytime particularly recently - and the era in which that kind of thing could and did happen is over. And most of the guys who did those jobs and survived spent the rest of their lives looking over their shoulders.
Nowadays, the places that have the wealth necessary for that kind of massive one-hit haul are sufficiently wealthy and patrolled to both keep piracy down and protect their shipping - and if somebody rolled a battlecruiser on their shipping, they either have a proper navy of their own or can call on the sledgehammer that is the SLN to retaliate.
Imagine, if you would, what would happen if, say, a bunch of Somali pirates got together to get a WW2 destroyer in working order in order to take ships, or even just one single ship with a high value cargo - or a drug cartel got a WW2 destroyer to protect their interests. Further imagine they managed to keep their destroyer more or less secret until they used it. The military response by the rest of the world would be swift and employ massive force, and not be particularly concerned about all the legal niceties. And you're saying a battlecruiser, so even an old one is really more like a WW2 or Cold War heavy cruiser. Nobody is going to bat an eye when they get flattened. I guarantee you if a bunch of Somali pirates or a cartel rolled out a proper warship - even an old one - they and their organization would shortly cease to exist as anything other than fleeing remnants, no matter where they were based/hiding. No extradition and/or no cooperation where they are? Oops, we accidentally-on-purpose violated your country's territory with what could be called an act of war if anyone were left to complain about it.



That's the thing with successful piracy for profit - you can't stand up to a military force that's gunning for you, no matter what you do, so you do you best to not draw the attention of a military force to yourself and your activities. The best defense, is, after all, not being a target in the first place.



Gustav Anderman wasn't a pirate. He was a mercenary, and a rather good one too. He probably had a few battlecruisers in his organization, though.
But, that's not particularly far wrong in what happens when a pirate for profit has enough money to buy and maintain a battlecruiser - they go legit, turn into one of the money guys behind other pirates, or invest in a safe retirement.
One other major difference between Gustav and Warnecke is Gustav was invited to take over, and engaged in positive projects when he did take over, whereas Warnecke invaded, began a reign of terror, and sent his fleet out to commit more piracy. Gustav did export mercenaries, but there is a difference between "mercenary" and "pirate" - and I expect that Gustav made it very clear what the differences were and on which side of the line his forces were expected to remain.
I'm not sure that there's a historical analogy for Gustav, actually.

cthia wrote:


Shit, doesn't always "just happen," sir.

Some, is given a stool softener, to help it along.

Murphy and war is the stool softener. Murphy brings to the table Pavel Young, who was tasked to escort the convoy.

The powers that be, did know the value of the cargo AND took great pains to ensure its safety. Detaching their most important tactical commander, Harrington and Fearless, to babysit a freighter is great pains for a navy at war. But guess what, the ball was dropped by a common idiot w/ loads of common "cents." Maybe even enough to make a dollar.

Young was ordered to take Warlock and Heavy Cruiser Squadron 17 to sector 8 and grab Harrington and Fearless then proceed to port A to await the escort. Guess what, the royal fumbler dropped the ball in the light that he'd be sailing with Harrington who would certainly draw trouble and death.

It's a once in a lifetime score. The intel came across the "desks" of some very reliable and very corrupt key government officials. The BC is known to be on the market. You don't have to find the crew. They'll find you for that payout. You only pick from the cream of the "wasn't long ago in the navy" pool. And you run simulations around the clock for months.


Plot device cuts both ways ya know.

So you are saying that you buy a BC and put an ad in the nearest paper that you want to hit a very high value target in 3 months worth x amount of dollars and the crew will find you? It seems like so many things are wrong with that line of thinking that for anyone to actually do it would border on insanity.


1)Announcing that you have a huge score in 3 months kind of has a very good chance of tipping off the target in question.

2) 2,000 top notch BC crewmembers don't just grow on trees, you are talking about Pirates who are by their very nature not fighters(ship wise) because they go after unarmed targets. So those with no combat experience other than blowing the odd freighter out of existence some how need to be able to get the skills needed to operate the ship in a short time frame?

3)If the Tactical commander is Harrington and the Warlock and HC Squadron 17 don't show up I doubt she will move from the system she is in. If HC 17 shows up then Pavel Young becomes irrelevant unless he is in overall command the other cruiser commanders have a say in things unless they are all so criminally stupid/cowardly as him which would means someone seriously stacked the deck.


4) For your scenario to work you need:
-to have a BC in hand
-it needs to be maintained to a certain standard which means frequent updates to its EW, Sensors and weapons(costs money and requires a caretaker crew)
-You need a crew when the situation pops up which is likely to mean you get a poorly trained, poorly disciplined, inexperienced crew and one that has likely never worked together as a whole.
-you will be going up against a potentially heavy escort because you have no way of knowing that Pavel Young will be the escort commander unless you have a mole inside the admiralty which for a mere pirate seems highly unlikely.
-you need someone who is terminally stupid to put all that value in one ship, a ship that can have mechanical malfunction that blows all of that money out, can be attacked by Pirates and destroyed or can be stolen by her very crew.


If I was in charge of moving that load from one system to another, I would split it up in multiple freighters and I would send it out at different times under escort. If one of the freighters is captured by pirates or destroyed through accident or otherwise it only represents a portion of the total value. And who would insure the cargo? We are talking about a good chunk of change, what company would insure that? What company would have the resources to insure that? And if you found one with the means and desire I would place a bet that they would most likely be placing a number of conditions before agreeing. Conditions like the security of the freighter. If it were me I would request a serious escort force, led by a competent escort commander and I would require armed marines on board the freighter. And that is if I was stupid enough to agree to insure a freighter with 2.2 trillion dollars worth of cargo all in one place.

My view on how this would go is, if someone has to move 2.2 trillion dollars of anything, they would demand that it be send through a dozen or two dozen freighters send at different times and through different routes with heavy escort every time. That would make each freighter worth ~90 Billion, still a hefty sum considering when the Manticorean delegation went to Grayson they had 150 billion dollars worth of goods in several transports and it still required a convoy of a CA,CL and two DD's.

Regarding the intel bit, not only would the pirate need to know the score's route but the exact time and location. The only way one ship can be sure of catching another specific ship is to know precisely when and where it'll be. If the score was depending on secrecy rather than a proper escort only one or two people would know that and maybe not even until they were in hyper.

The ship would also have to pass through a system that either wouldn't see or couldn't drive off a BC hanging about on the other side of the hyper limit.

A few months ago, one of the Baen podcasts featured an interview with BuNine members. They mentioned that one of the things they were doing was fleshing out various aspects of the Honorverse so they made sense. They also mentioned that the one part of the Honorverse that they hadn't (yet) managed to make sense of was the economics of space commerce. It wasn't for lack of trying or because they didn't have an economist. They did and they do.

Space piracy in the Honorverse works the way David says it works because that's the way David wants it to work. It doesn't seem to make sense because none of the economics of the Honorverse makes sense.

The Economics of Piracy:

Foods are transshipped to worlds, not corporations and people. Freighters have to make money. They don't like operating unless full. They can't afford to. Planets don't want to wait for another freighter coming in months. They can't afford that nonsense. You all imagine that a big score is "goods to or fro," one planet of origin. I doubt that's the norm. Worlds, and entities within, are probably responsible for their own insurance. One thing's for certain, the matter of their insurance isn't a concern for pirates. I'm fairly damn sure about that.

Freighters? These behemoths have a huge DWT (dry weight tonnage) And they aren't as numerous as fat buffalo on the plains of Kansas. Heck, I'm sure that the League wishes it had plenty more of these buffalo. In fact, they'd really like to steal some of that fat high-on-the-hog uppity neobarb's freighter cattle as well. So when you need to import or export goods in a time sensitive fashion as I imagine all planets dealing with months as a delivery schedule do, you take whatever available transport comes along or is scheduled to come. And you have a huge order arriving! Some of them get really loaded folks. Just like the mail trucks along some routes.

It's beginning to sound like everyone is trying to force normalcy and its associated thinking onto pirates. These are not logical people, at least the logic as you and I know it. (I'm tentatively including you as having vision) And they, and therefore their thinking and lifestyle, aren't driven by common logic.

Why does a pirate decide to pirate anyways? It's because Murphy has beat the shit out of him so many times that they bunk together.

Piracy is a problem people. It is real. You all seem to be babies about it. Pirates don't just take what they "need to survive" from the "total booty available in the universe" like native American Indians who respect the cycle of life.

Pirates always take what they can. What they think they can get away with. They can't afford to pass up on a once in a lifetime score that they may never see again. These people have families to get back to, or relationships, if they ever want to remain sane and human. Shore leave and vacation aren't benefits that some corporate conglomerate or the government gives to pirates. It isn't a 9 - 5 job with the luxury of knowing when they'll make it back anywhere. So to expect them to take time and chance to overanalyze anything while the next pirate is signing on for dry buffalo on the plains is ridiculous. After all, I may actually be right that pirates really do have relationships, loved ones and an existence to support.

So when a once in a lifetime slam bam thank you mam comes along, "You speak for yourself and let them do what they do." It's piracy and "It Is What It Is." The volume of space is huge. It isn't like there's so many buffalo out on the plains that every pirate is living high on the hog. It's the sort of scarcity in hunting that makes a lone hyena consider challenging a lion for food.

In the Golden Age of Piracy, the early times which first alerted planets, not navies that they even needed a mechanism to fight piracy - when the stink of it first bit the universe in its collective ass and the highest form of thieving criminal first stood up and claimed himself "I am Preston of the Chaseways!" - I imagine that NOTHING was safe.

I imagine that the concept had to be reborn. It was nothing like Blackbeard's era. 'But the greed is the same,' you might think. Oh no, you can't say that either. An Old Earth historical pirate cannot imagine the true riches floating about in the vastness of space. We're even arguing about it in a forum of speculation.

This is the vastness of space. The act of piracy here had to evolve. Is always evolving. Again, as I speculate, early on, I can imagine that ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WAS SAFE! Piracy didn't become a problem by being nice. I imagine that even military escorts were attacked in the Golden Age before it was established by virgin example that this is a bad idea. Military convoys are at risk even currently in the Honorverse, and are attacked. Just not by pirates. But by commerce raiders or privateers. A technical, more politically correct form of pirate. They are simply pirates with a conscious or ideals of patriotic ramblings AND support.

Even commerce raiders and privateers probably have corruption within their ranks, and who are stealing confiscated and seized convoys and selling it on the black market themselves. And what does that make them? Technically, right back into pirates - only difference, who may actually get court-martialed instead of airlocked. Technically, these pirates already do have BCs and SDs. Do you really think all of the commerce raiders and privateers of every polity is honest? Good luck with that naive outlook of how reality really works.

And if try as you may, you still can't wrap your head around humans having rogue thoughts like "the one big score" even though it would be fraught with perils and a guarantee that one day they'll be running for their life and hiding...

⇒ Exhibit A: Elaine Komondorski.

A rare breed of pirate. She steals from the rich governments and creams of societies and gives to herself. Elaine cares about self. The definition of a pirate. She used sex, stealth, feminine strategy and tactics every time to secure the big score. Which landed her in positions of power, acceptance and influence. The quintessential successful female pirate at heart. Who would have sold out her own mother had she been aboard the slave ship. And she pissed off several navies and factions that are now gunning for her to do it. In that light, it sure doesn't seem to ring true about the fear of being chased by entire navies and polities enough of a deterrent to stop the greed of humankind.

I suspect, in the Golden Age of piracy, that even navies all over the universe lost booty to pirates. Until the universe realized it had to get its shit together. But it still has its diaper changed here and there. When real life and reality sends it to the crapper to sit on the potty to think. "We've really got a problem in Silesia. And it stinks. Or is that us?"


Wake up forumites, pirates are not in Kansas anymore.

What was a humorous thought throughout reading this series that occurred to me time and time again, more so in this thread, is that I wager there have been times when an escort was inadequately supported because of available ships, oversight, error or neglect and limped back to some base, shot up and overpowered by pirates.

I know. You're really going to have trouble with that thought, as some of you've never really been to Kansas.

The rest of you are probably thinking I'm actually talking about the state.

.

If you want to buy BCs or any kind of warship, you had best be setting yourself up as a mercenary and have at least some kind of practical naval experience to go along with that. The "pirate fleets" that Saganami was dealing with were essentialy mercinary operations which we seem to be being told are operating for Manpower/Mesa.
Pirate fleets are mostly like unicorns- they exist in someobody's imagination. The successful pirates in the era of Henry Morgan and friends - when they made some serious money off of things like Spanish treasure ships- were essentialy English privateers with ties (and funding) from the Crown. Later, a number of these guys and crews went off on their own but what you only sometimes hear is that they came to a sticky end.
Lafette, operating out of the swamps near New Orleans was a better model of pirate but even he had lots of connections to business and government in New Orleasns and other Caribbean ports to sell his captured goods and ships. He also sold captured crew as slaves. I will NOT get into the slave market appetite of the Spanish holdings in Central and South America.

You want to be a pirate, get some relativly inexpensive freighter, are it as well as you can to take unarmed merchants or lightly armed merchants and have some connections to buy lots of bulk cargo and "used" ships. Fences exist because they can wash merchandise through to places where it shows up as ligitimate goods for sale. The end of the sales stream back into the ligitimate markets isn't vastly off-market, it is usually just a good or a really good deal someone gets because somebody else is in a bind, or so the story will likely flow. Selling ships would be the same thing. You need paperwork, people who will handle the trades and paperwork and those same people will probably also share in the profit.

You take a ship in Silesia with a cargo- mostly bulk but lots of individual shipments of "stuff' that have swapped carriers and transhipment points more than 10 times before getting to the final destination and you have paper trails. You sell, .8 million tons of Tere Haut wheat that was part of a cargo hijacked (along with the ship) in System X and sell it in System B two steps along a "normal" shipping route, you had best be careful that the original buyer isn't in System B or doesn't hear that he missed the opportunity to replace a missing shipment when it was sold as a "good price" over in System H21.

You also need something like a freighter to do two other things besides not scream WARSHIP, NATIONALITY UNKNOWN PROBABLE PIRATE, when you show up someplace. You need something to keep you actualy employed while you look far a target. Something that puts money in the acounts, pays your crew and keeps the ship operating. You also need something that will carry -very very quietly- enough trained crew to both take over and crew a captured ship to someplace you can sell said ship and cargo. And do that very very quietly.
Amoung other reasons for that extra (and we are probably talking at least two watches worth of extra competent crew capable of operating the prize) is so you and your original crew can continue on whatever probable rout to and from cargo stops to keep looking like a normal ship. You may be slow and have a very erratic series of port calls but you need to look like some kind of funtioning freighter to any officials and remain at least nominial profitable and be looking to deal with shipments as you can find them.

Piracy is complicated.

Kytheros wrote:Gustav Anderman wasn't a pirate. He was a mercenary, and a rather good one too. He probably had a few battlecruisers in his organization, though.
But, that's not particularly far wrong in what happens when a pirate for profit has enough money to buy and maintain a battlecruiser - they go legit, turn into one of the money guys behind other pirates, or invest in a safe retirement.
One other major difference between Gustav and Warnecke is Gustav was invited to take over, and engaged in positive projects when he did take over, whereas Warnecke invaded, began a reign of terror, and sent his fleet out to commit more piracy. Gustav did export mercenaries, but there is a difference between "mercenary" and "pirate" - and I expect that Gustav made it very clear what the differences were and on which side of the line his forces were expected to remain.
I'm not sure that there's a historical analogy for Gustav, actually.

Actually from what RFC has said at conventions Gustav not only had modern (for the time) BCs but was involved in having the very first Battleships designed and built, as the new heaviest warship in existence.

But his was a time before the SLN was really the SLN, so military mercenary companies got a relative lot of contracts from systems within the (then much smaller) League; things that Frontier Force or even a Battlefleet squadron might get tasked with now (or at least closer to now).
Apparently around the time he retired to form his own country his mercenaries were getting powerful enough to be a sizable fraction of the strength of the proto-SLN. IIRC the agreement fo him to retire was tied up in his designing and ordering the 1st BBs. Basically that he could get them and then promise to go far far away from the Legue; but only if he shared their design with the SLN and the SLN was able to buy matching BBs of their own.

JohnRoth wrote: It doesn't seem to make sense because none of the economics of the Honorverse makes sense.

Pretty much. The honorverse is a poor physics textbook, and a terrible economics textbook. However it's pretty fun space opera.

cthia wrote:[
It's beginning to sound like everyone is trying to force normalcy and its associated thinking onto pirates. These are not logical people, at least the logic as you and I know it. (I'm tentatively including you as having vision) And they, and therefore their thinking and lifestyle, aren't driven by common logic.

Why does a pirate decide to pirate anyways? It's because Murphy has beat the shit out of him so many times that they bunk together.

Piracy is a problem people. It is real. You all seem to be babies about it. Pirates don't just take what they "need to survive" from the "total booty available in the universe" like native American Indians who respect the cycle of life.

Street gangs are composed of people like that. Last I heard there were 50,000 members of the Gangster Disciples in Chicago. When was the last time they tried to hit Fort Knox? How about the Chicago Federal Reserve bank? Why not?