Slate on pirate myths:
"Arrrrr" is strictly fiction, as are a number of the other affiliated signifiers: Nobody ever walked the plank, and nobody has ever discovered an actual pirate treasure map. On the myth-confirming side, pirates were known to dress in loose clothing, guzzle rum and smash the empty bottles, and chase busty wenches through Caribbean ports.
While we're on the subject of pirates, there's a very interesting paper out on the governance of pirate enterprises, appropriately (albeit apparently mythologically) entitled An-arrgh-chy: The Law and Economics of Pirate Organization:
This paper investigates the internal governance institutions of violent criminal enterprise by examining the law, economics, and organization of pirates. These most treacherous rogues terrorized the waters of the Caribbean, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans during the 17th and 18th centuries. Pirates formed a loose confederation of maritime bandits outside the law of any government. To effectively organize their banditry, pirates required mechanisms to prevent internal predation, minimize crew conflict, and maximize piratical profit. I argue that pirates devised two institutions to overcome these obstacles to successful organization. First, I look at the system of piratical checks and balances that crews used to constrain captain predation. Second, I examine how pirates used democratic constitutions to minimize conflict and create piratical law and order. Remarkably, pirates adopted both of these institutions before the United States or England.
I absolutely dote on this sort of stuff. Corporate governance pays the bills, but thinking about the institutional economics of pirates, the mob, and the Roman Catholic Church can be even more fun. (See, e.g, my musings on the prize money system and agency costs). (HT: Rob)
All kidding aside, there is a rather serious question raised by this paper; namely, to what extent can complex organizations spontaneously generate workable governance systems. A standard explanation for the role of law in organizational governance is that legal rules provide a set of rules the parties can adopt off the rack (subject to such modifications as may be necessary). As the story goes, this reduces transaction costs both by reducing the risk that important terms will go unspecified and by reducing the need for bargaining. If pirate enterprises were viable entities, this might call into question the extent to which law is actually necessary to promote the formation of business organizations.
