Because they were usually run democratically and that made it too easy to recruit crew from other ships.
this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2025
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Because they didn't pay taxes. You're looking for buccaneers aka licensed and registered pirates.
Except megacorporations barely pay taxes, in fact, they get subsidies
They pay bribes, though!
They pay bribes to politicians, then the politicians write a law giving corporate more subsidies from your tax dollars, so in the end, corporate always wins.
Privateers?
Edit. All buccaneers privateers but not all privateers buccaneers?
Edit edit: How much did you pay tor the gauges? A buck an ear.
I swear officer, I have my letter of marque here somewhere, just give me a sec...
One set works within a system that they have set up to benefit only themselves.
The other works outside that system either for themselves or a separate collective. Working outside the measured control system is a direct threat to the profits the beneficiaries of that system.
Except that piracy has always been explicitly endorsed by the beneficiaries of the system, they simply change the name, structure the conditions such that their piracy is considered part of the system even if it isn't and then proceed to be pirates.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privateer
Things get even more muddled when you consider that selfish agents may believe they are structuring a system for selfish gain when they are in fact destroying the system for everybody including themselves.
This is all notwithstanding the fact that most of where we get our modern day depiction of pirates as evil ne'er-do-wells is from Robert Newton films.
No greater crime in capitalism than to hurt your fellow capitalists. You’re supposed to squeeze the proles
Look how they did that little weasel Martin Shkreli. Insurance companies can steal from the people, but that little shit stole from them so they nailed him to the fucking wall.
I have a hypothesis that the Nassau pirates were a successful socialist economy. The Flying Gang/Republic of Pirates was founded mostly from former privateers (legally sanctioned and "licensed" marauders). The democratic and socialist nature of the republic was a growing threat to royalty and the American ruling class, especially given that Africans could be full crew members and even captains with all the rights afforded those roles. Furthermore, European royalty and American capitalists were the only ones "allowed" to pillage native lands. The pirates were in turn sacking European and American ships of their ill-gotten and exploitative gains.
Having a socialist, comparatively egalitarian and equitable society amidst the Carribean sugar plantations was too much of a threat to the ruling classes. The pirates were ruthlessly pursued and purged from history. Sure, King George I (and some others? don't recall) first tried to bring the Nassau pirates (back) into the fold with offers of amnesty. This is analogous to offering modern engineers well-paying jobs; most terrorists whose names you know start out as engineers*. The ruling classes first wanted to put the pirates' skills to use for their own gain. Benjamin Hornigold was one who returned, hunting down his former peers.
*think about that the next time you run across a bored, disgruntled engineer
I find it very odd that books on the golden age of piracy all remark how the pirates supposedly kept no records, yet discuss at length how the pirates had healthcare, disability, pensions, equitable wealth distribution... these things all require assiduous record-keeping. And so my bullshitspiration is that there were records. But the campaign to wipe out the pirates was so thorough that we are now led to believe that the pirates were just brigands and chaotic anarchists.
Nothing to add except to say that was a thought provoking read.
Just to say, they were still semi-anarchist in nature, but not in the modern sense where it means "chaos" rather the political sense where it means "absence of hierarchy and horizontally-structured self-governance", which is representative of the confederated nature of the Flying Gang where the different crews were considered equal and all had a say in their governance, based in a mutually agreed upon code of conduct. Within the crews themselves, captains were more like delegates who were chosen to take on leadership responsibilities but were at the whims of the crew. Power came from the bottom up, not the top down. If a crew was displeased with how their captain led the ship they were well within their right to depose him and appointed a new one.
Anarchism is not the bad "chaos and disorder" that the ruling class would have you believe.
Is the assumption here that the navies, of the various countries that have one, capture commerce ships to bring back to the home country? If so, I have some bad news for you. Hell, even in war they don't capture said ships.
The age of piracy existed before anyone had uttered the word "capitalism". It was an age of mercantilism and agrarianism, not capitalism.
I'd assume that capitalists aren't happy about getting their ships nabbed by hostile navies, either. Generally, the only ones who get rich off this kind of violence and usually get away with it are the capitalists who build weapons, and only if their country never gets occupied.
Legalities aside, pirates are stealing from people with more resources, which is why they're pursued by these naval forces. The logic of capitalism dictates that the biggest fish eats all the smaller fish and the wealthy are the big fish while the pirates are not.
I'm not sure what you mean by "worse" but you don't see the US Navy attacking and looting UK ships for example, which is why most people would consider pirates to be "worse."
I think the british royal navy became one of the more successful pirate gangs if that helps the analysis. They were part state subsidised, but became rapidly self sustaining. If your British made galleon is shit, don't worry, it only needs to last long enough to steal a French made one!
Just a point of information though I think 'capitalists' normally (nominally) support property rights. I think you're talking libertarian / anarchist who are more literally smash and grab. But it is a blurry line. At the end of the day they're all just humans. Striving to label them, or their behaviour, and then second guessing the meaning of the labels, or expecting consistency will probably drive you insane.
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Capitalism by definition runs on legal framework. If you're not adhering to the legal framework, you're not engaging in capitalism
According to who? I have seen zero evidence in my life capitalism requires a legal framework, it simply requires the threat of violence.
According to who?
That's the basic definition of capitalism: Free market + legal framework that enforces agreements and private property.
A legal framework is a monopoly on violence.
Really wish more people understood this.
This whole post is just a political "capitalism bad" statement. It might as well be about bank robbers.
Because they‘re drunken. Navy not.
Pirates are actually Communists
They just tended to kill a little faster.
By George, I think OP's got it.
It's a fundamentally wrong understanding that capitalism follows ideals or a viewpoint-independent logic.
The logic of capitalism is "what benefits me is good, what benefits others is bad".
That's why e.g. Musk (same as many other CEOs) will proclaim that government subsidies for his competitors is socialism and bad, while he's perfectly happy to open his hand when the government subsidizes his companies.
At it's core, capitalism is system of resource distribution. It's in contrast to other resource distribution systems, such as how indigenous people and early human tribes are often thought of as using various system of resource distribution that are collective in nature, where everyone shares all resources and people take only what's needed (though this was far from the only resource distribution system used by those peoples), and it came about primarily in contrast to feudal systems of resource distribution, where powerful kings and lords would collect resources from the broader public and then spend them however they wanted.
Let's say you have an anarchist / libertarian resource distribution system or lack thereof, where most people live in small individual plots of land, grow what they need, and in general don't share or distribute resources. That means that each individual family / plot can be strong, but as a collective they will struggle to move as one when they need to. If an invading army shows up and they need every single potential soldier to fight to their death or risk conquering and enslavement, they're going to have a hard time convincing everyone to do so. If they need some people to stop planting crops so that the soil can rotate, they're going to be unable to because that's the only land and resources those people have. These systems fundamentally lead to game theory coordination problems, and inefficiencies because resources aren't shared.
In contrast, feudalism is a centralized system where one person controls everything (it's more distributed in actuality, but that's the basic structure it takes). This creates the opportunity for efficiency, and to move quickly, but also creates massive opportunities for human fallibility to waste and ruin everything.
Capitalism on the other hand promises to be a distributed, decentralized resource distribution system. Everyone just has to behave according to their own self interest, and resources will flow to where they're needed. If I make a better product than you, that should prove out that I'm better at making products, and should thus get more resources so that people who are better at making products make more than those who are worse.
Does it work out that way in practice? No, not always, this is an incredibly simplified model system, but the core idea behind capitalism, is basically the same core idea that's behind lemmy and the fediverse. Decentralized, distributed systems. They're hard to design, and they require everyone agreeing on standards, but they are more flexible and don't have the fallibility of central authorities.
How does the tendency to monopolize fit into this? A monopolized market doesn't seem very decentralized.
No, and I would argue that most people who are actually small-c conservative capitalists don't actually like businesses growing to the point of monopoly, and especially conglomerizing and crossing industries.
It is why every country has some form of anti-competition regulation, because capitalism is not a perfect system and can run amok if the appropriate guard rails aren't in place.
That's where government guard rails come in. In the US we used to break or disallow monopolies. We have thrown that fight in the trash over the past several decades.
This chart should scare the living shit out of us.
That's the issue here though. Capitalism tends to monopolize. Its mechanics reward monopolies, sind monopolies have much better negotiation powers and economies of scale. Government guardrails are a patch applied from the outside, because unchecked capitalism is broken.
In fact, feudalism is what happens if you let capitalism run unchecked, and it's exactly how feudalism came into existence.
Money begets power, power begets money.
At it’s core, capitalism is system of resource distribution. It’s in contrast to other resource distribution systems, such as how indigenous people and early human tribes are often thought of as using various system of resource distribution that are collective in nature, where everyone shares all resources and people take only what’s needed (though this was far from the only resource distribution system used by those peoples), and it came about primarily in contrast to feudal systems of resource distribution, where powerful kings and lords would collect resources from the broader public and then spend them however they wanted.
Sorry, that's just not correct. Capitalism and feudalism are the same thing. If you let capitalism run unchecked, you get feudalism. A company town is essentially a feudalistic construct, if there's no government around to keep capitalism in check.
These systems fundamentally lead to game theory coordination problems, and inefficiencies because resources aren’t shared.
Nope, these systems lead to the capital taking over. You will have one group of people who fare better than the others, so they will end up buying everyone's land and will hire them to work for them. Money is power and power makes money. So as soon as not everyone is perfectly equal in what value they can create, someone will make more, thus be able to hire more people and buy more and, which will make them more money and the loop continues.
Capitalism on the other hand promises to be a distributed, decentralized resource distribution system. Everyone just has to behave according to their own self interest, and resources will flow to where they’re needed. If I make a better product than you, that should prove out that I’m better at making products, and should thus get more resources so that people who are better at making products make more than those who are worse.
This is flat-out wrong. Nothing in this paragraph is correct.
Read up on e.g. Standard Oil if you want to know why there's no need to make a better product or be more efficient to become a monopoly, and why once there's a monopoly, it's super easy for the monopolist to suppress any new competitors, no matter how much more efficient or better they are.
Does it work out that way in practice? No, not always, this is an incredibly simplified model system, but the core idea behind capitalism, is basically the same core idea that’s behind lemmy and the fediverse. Decentralized, distributed systems. They’re hard to design, and they require everyone agreeing on standards, but they are more flexible and don’t have the fallibility of central authorities.
That is not what capitalism is or does. Capitalism is not an inherently distributed system. Capitalism is a system where the one who has the capital can use it to make more capital, thus massively advantaging someone who already has capital over someone who doesn't.
Money is power and power makes money.
The only reason a capitalist system doesn't instantly collapse into feudalism is if there's a strong opposition against it which operates outside of the capitalistic framework. Namely unions and democracy. That's the only way the many people without capital can counter-balance the few with all the capital.
Have you ever looked at wealth distribution charts, like ever? The US is well past a healthy capitalist society and pretty close to a feudalist one, or as we call them today, a fascist one.
It's a fundamentally wrong understanding that capitalism follows ideals or a viewpoint-independent logic.
I have just explained the viewpoint-independent logic behind capitalism.
You are stating problems with our current system, that is different from the underlying ideals and viewpoint-independent logic that people use to justify and advocate for capitalism.
You are no different than a capitalist pointing at Soviet Union bread lines and being flabbergasted that anyone could possibly support any form of socialism.
Oh no, another one of these "there are only anarcho-capitalism and socialism and nothing in between" types.
There is no viewpoint-independent logic behind capitalism because capitalism wasn't designed. It's a natural function of trade. As soon as you have the concepts of property and trade, you have capitalism. The ancient babylonians had capitalism, and so did the ancient egyptians.
What we call capitalist theory now is nothing but descriptivism coupled with a bit of putting up anti-caputalist guardrails to make sure capitalism doesn't completely run amok. And since the 70s, these guardrails have been left to rot or actively dismantled.
Again, if you do nothing, capitalism will emerge. If you continue to do nothing, monopolists will emerge. If you continue to do nothing, these monopolists will take over the government, and you get feudalism.
That's just the natural, mathematical precession.
Oh no, another one of these "there are only anarcho-capitalism and socialism and nothing in between" types.
Not at all what I said, I explicitly, and repeatedly, referenced the real world systems being more complex and nuanced than the model systems that show the basic pros and cons of the system type.
There is no viewpoint-independent logic behind capitalism because capitalism wasn't designed. It's a natural function of trade. As soon as you have the concepts of property and trade, you have capitalism. The ancient babylonians had capitalism, and so did the ancient egyptians.
So in your mind only things that are intentionally designed by humans can have viewpoint-independent logic?
There are no naturally arising systems in nature that have viewpoint-independent logic?
And you think that modern trade and capitalism is completely and 100% just natural and would always occur no matter what and has no basis in the work of capitalist theorists like Adam Smith and Karl Marx?
Again, if you do nothing, capitalism will emerge. If you continue to do nothing, monopolists will emerge. If you continue to do nothing, these monopolists will take over the government, and you get feudalism.
So you're arguing that stable trade networks and relationships have never existed and are impossible to exist or maintain?
UK and NL navies were effectively pirates raiding African and Indian coast.
The history just doesn't teach them as such because horrors of European Colonialism has been down played for propaganda reasons.