Philosophical Quandry: Piracy

[Baron Munchausen]

[quote]Originally posted by TerranC:

quote:

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Originally posted by Suicide Junkie:

Piracy of physical items is much more easily prevented, and you hardly see any swashbucklers these days.

In well-protected waters, that is, such as waters near Europe, North America, Austrailia, and NE Asia. Piracy is still alive and kicking in SE asia, where people are poor, but have easy access to boats, guns, and small, hidden, deserted islands for pirates to hide away.

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And even there you're only speaking in relative terms. No one really knows how many battles there have been between various drug cartels or immigrant smugglers over ships as well as other tools of the trade (planes, etc.) and their cargos as they ply their various businesses. Only 'law abiding' people report when their ship has been taken by violence. You're not gonna get much help from the navies of the world if you report that your 10,000 tons of cocaine was snatched by a rival cartel. So a true picture of the amount of 'piracy' in the world is difficult to form.

[ July 14, 2003, 02:25: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]