Introduction – Privateers vs Pirates
When we think of pirates we picture them with eye patches, bandanas or fancy head-dresses, but pirates are anyone who uses property without the permission of its rightful owners. Privateers are pirates who use war and the political system to make their thefts, usurpations and conversions legal. That broader definition has been used since the beginning. Piracy is in the eye of the Beholder.
When we think of pirates we picture them with eye patches, bandanas and at sea. But the word buccaneer comes from people raising cattle and making leather. While a pirate is a thief who sails the seas. Brigand is a pirate but also a generic term for a thief who can be on land. Pirates and thieves are outlaws -- unless they have a permit to steal. Then they are called privateers.
Pirates and privateers have operated in the Caribbean, the Mediterranean, the black sea, the Caspian, the Baltic Sea, the Atlantic, Pacific, every ocean and many lakes around the world.
Pirates and privateers engage in private warfare. The term when that private warfare is conducted on land is "filibustering." A Filibusterer was a soldier in a private army operating on land. Sometimes they were also mercenaries -- who are soldiers who work for a private force. Piracy and privateering have always been a feature of war and conflict. From:
- the Ancient Trojans, who waged piracy in the Mediterranean, to the Greeks, who were rival pirates who destroyed Troy
- From Rome and the Carthagians to the Vandals and other German invaders,
- From the Angles, Saxons and Jutes who plagued both sides of the English Channel til they settled in Britain,
- From the Vikings who waged war with the Christian Kingdoms who had attacked them
- To the Normans who once again sailed the Mediterranean as well as conquering Britain -- as Christians
- And of course the Barbary Pirates, Arabs, Malays, Japanese, Chinese and other coastal people -- all pirates
- And now the Americans.
Pirates in Fiction and Reality
In Pirates of the Caribbean, it looks like the Pirates are fighting the British Navy, but they really were fighting the East India Company, which was a rival pirate gang, but perfectly legal. Ironically, our revolution started as a fight against the East India Company too. The "Tea Parties" were about a Government sanctioned effort to take over and monopolize the tea trade by putting competitors out of business with artificially low prices on British carried tea, and taxes on American Ships. There is some evidence that the first American colonies were founded as pirate refuges.
Piracy and land hunger go together. The Saxons who invaded in Britain were hungry for farms. The Vikings were hungry for land. The settlers of the Americas from Eurasia, were property hungry; land, loot, slaves, wealth, likewise. Privateering is about acquiring property.
No real distinction between pirate and privateer
The distinction between privateers and pirates has always been a parsed legal one. American "filibusters", like the Walkers, Texans, Jacksons, etc.... were considered pirates by the Spanish speaking people they plagued.
The privateer may have a legal permit from his own country --> but he is waging war and war is violent and illegal in the fundamental moral sense. from the Point of view of the people we were attacking.
Pirates, profiteers, and the industries who inherit their traditions, may be perfectly legal, but they are amoral to immoral buzzards who violate norms and do things that ought to be illegal
Privateering companies are no better than pirate fleets, except they are somewhat constrained by laws. When they engage in theft, smuggling, private warfare, as part of a war or under some legal permit. So when the Government says that theft is legal, it is privateering. When people don't bother to get "clothed in the law" and engage in naked robbery of some kind, it is piracy. Privateers get to hang pirates.
Modern Pirates
I see Privateering as an ideology. I explained in a post first written in 2014:
- An Ideology of Privateering
Thus, modern pirates are people who sell copies of movies or songs without paying royalties to their legal owners. Modern privateers setup abusive contracts to acquire such ownership. Thus modern pirates are usually dressed in fancy Armani or other well tailored suites, carry portfolios and have degrees from classy law schools, and are legally privateers not pirates. The victims, on the other hand, may have actually written the song they are charged with piracy for using. An abusive contract can take ownership of things like authorship, that no person can really sell, since selling the rights to a work doesn't change who wrote it. But modern pirates don't usually have peg legs anymore. It is much safer to bribe a judge or pay a legislator to change the law.
The Pirates and the Privateers of Music
For example in our system if one reproduces music without the permission of the corporate owner, even if you were the author. You are a pirate. The USA constitution gives people rights to inventions and writings for limited times for the purpose of stimulating commerce. Privateers lobbied to expand the time patents and copyrights operate long enough so they become virtual titles of nobility. Intellectual property, if it existed, should be the property of the inventor. Under the power of corrupt lobbying and influence pedaling, intellectual property becomes a rental property of giant conglomerates and wealthy individuals. No longer a connection to invention and no longer a limited right with a limited term. That is who privateering works.
Most of us are used to them the way someone gets used to living in a pig-sty. This post is about some alternatives. But first we have to identify the real pirates.
The biggest pirates have usually dressed better than the drifters and thieves that get labeled as pirates. If they aren't lawyers they can afford them. Worse, they can usually afford (or are) politicians. They can write the law. The term for this was "privateer" in the past. Modern Letter of Marquees come in the form of Corporate Charters or their ability to acquire patents, trade-marks, copyrights, from the creators. Modern pirates hang the hapless as pirates. They are known to sue and take the money of artists who made the mistake of selling their original work to them. That the original work belongs to them by basic right and can't be sold legitimately, doesn't matter to the pirates. They write the laws. They are privateers.
Privateering is the right word because it is when the government grants a right of private government to an individual or hierarchy bound by contract [corporation]. Privateering is based on privatizing basic public function and enables profiteering, private warfare, smuggling, swindle and theft, all perfectly legal because the law has been modified to make it so.
This post is about privateering and the money power. The subject is frequently distorted by cultlike arguments, but the reality is that our system of inequality, of periodic economic failure, is based on grifting and cons that depend on privatized money.
Of course the most lucrative way to loot everyone, is to issue privatized money. Whether it is bit coin or fly by night banks, the goal is the same, to legally counterfeit money! Letting Wall street or private Pirates using banks to coin money as debt is an economy wrecker and that is the subject of this post.
- This follows the historical introduction in:
- An Ideology of Private Banking
- And:
- Privateering Smuggling and Piracy
