How can we stop pirate attacks? By applying the law of demand. If something becomes more costly, people consume less of it. In this case, making piracy more costly means fewer people will become pirates.
How do this? One cruise ship company has an answer: fire back. Making piracy a riskier, more dangerous proposition — i.e., more expensive — forces pirates to think twice before attacking.
How disheartening, then, that both of the experts quoted in this news report oppose arming ships that pass through pirate-infested waters. They ignore the law of demand at the peril of innocent people.
This is exactly why I mourn economic illiteracy.
The celebrations and congratulations over the U.S. Navy’s rescue of Capt. Richard Phillips are well deserved and proper all around. Yet even after the jubilation has quieted down, piracy in the high seas remains a threat to global trade. That’s important for the U.S. Senate to keep in mind when it again considers the Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST), which, as The Wall Street Journal‘s Bret Stephens noted last November, could present some potential obstacles to American naval action against pirates. I wrote an earlier post about this, but this point is worth repeating:
Article 110 of the U.N.’s Law of the Sea Convention — ratified by most nations, but not by the U.S. — enjoins naval ships from simply firing on suspected pirates. Instead, they are required first to send over a boarding party to inquire of the pirates whether they are, in fact, pirates.
Such an approach could only result in wholesale hostage taking. Capt. Phillips’s ordeal has made the danger that would entail. President Obama’s decision to use deadly force was the right one. Neither he nor his predecessors should be constrained in similar situations in the future.
Ratification of the Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST) would mean a loss of sovereignty and burdensome extraterritorial regulation of U.S. extractive industries. In today’s Wall Street Journal, Bret Stephens provides yet another reason to avoid ratifying the treaty, in light of the recent surge in hijackings by Somali pirates.
Article 110 of the U.N.’s Law of the Sea Convention — ratified by most nations, but not by the U.S. — enjoins naval ships from simply firing on suspected pirates. Instead, they are required first to send over a boarding party to inquire of the pirates whether they are, in fact, pirates.
Silly as this is, at least it would work in its intended purpose — when a boarding party is taken hostage and doesn’t come back! For the boarding party’s late members, however, LOST may need a provision similar to whatever honors the Star Federation accords to red-shirted Enterprise crew members.
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