Leeson apply them mode of economic thought

THE INVISIBLE HOOK THE HIDDEN ECONOMICS OF PIRATES

by Peter t. Leeson, Princetown University Press, 2009, 350 pages

Maritime piracy has recently resurfaced in force in the wide of the coast of Somalia. Peter Leeson is a buff American academic economics, piracy and adventures. In a highly original work, which begins with a dedication containing his marriage application, the onus is on the end of the 17th century and the beginning of the 18th. During these decades, the pirates terrorized the oceans and the Governments. Leeson apply them "mode of economic thought".While cooperation means, for everyone, as a result of the "invisible hand" theorized by Adam Smith. in the case of the pirates, it's "invisible hook". This play on words Leeson means cooperation mechanisms that distinguish the piracy.

Crews are organizations, with their rules and their rites. With no client meet and completely driven by their interests, hackers must live together, often for long months. From the images of anarchic structure of vessels and romantic commitment or policy crew, portraits of Leeson are the individuals interested, rational, responding to incentives (mainly the lure of money). If they are often infamous, engaged in behaviors of predators and parasites, hackers are clever, even in terror. The use of codes of honour and specific images (the famous black flag at head of death) is totally rational. The black flag is an effective brand with first effect of the attacked vessels go more quickly, without bloodshed.

The most striking point deals with the democracy of the pirates. A reverse of the Merchant Navy, where the organization is very hierarchical and autocratic (with violence potentially very high master), the pirates have adopted a participatory and democratic management. Major decisions, including the designation of the master, through the vote. Where the ship has very often been stolen, there is, in theory, not a problem of ownership. Another surprise, the pirates are in advance in tolerance. Even though they are often involved in the slave trade, black and white are equal on Pirate ships. For the man of the sea, being pirate this higher risk, of course, but the prospects for greater gains and working conditions improved.

This dive very documented in a singular economy shows us the emergence of co-operatives in criminal vocation somehow. Leeson spent only a few lines to the contemporary resurgence of piracy. He points to reason how it differs in that it works from small fast boats that have nothing to do with these embedded mini-sociétés that were Pirate ships. This curious but very rigorous book is to read on the beach, or even on a boat.

AN INTELLECTUAL HISTORY OF CANNIBALISM

by Catalin Avramescu, Princetown University Press, 2009, 350 pages

Catalin Avramescu, Professor of political science at the University of Bucharest, invites us to an unexpected intellectual journey. Cannibalism is an entry for the evolution of modern thought. Avramescu is interested in the reality and the economy of cannibalism but its occurrence and its definitions in the philosophical texts, in particular those of the Renaissance and lights. Kant, Hobbes, Locke, Voltaire and Rousseau are more honour than Rawls or the various "déconstructeurs" contemporary (Deleuze, Derrida, etc.).

This scholar, arduous and richly illustrated book has the interest to propose a revision (or discovery) a novel angle of large segments of the philosophy. Avramescu analyzes three major conceptual steps of the assessment of cannibalism. In a first framework, cannibalism includes in the perspective of natural law. Overcrowding associated with the decrease of resources would lead to such practices. The cannibalism would be a natural adaptation. With humour, offset and violence, Jonathan Swift (author of "Voyages de gulliver") proposes, in times of famine, to return to the poor children in the economic circuit, in electing to devote them to food. The second framework opened by Avramescu, to classify ideas and thinkers, is the anthropological aberration. The anthropophagous would be a demonic creation, hence the opportunity to strongly intervene to prevent it and destroy it. The third frame is that of relativism: the Cannibal is a creature accepted according to the locations, times and circumstances. For the "classics", remember that the discovery of the new world of exotic and savage behaviour, brought back by various accounts, shook the certainties. A Montaigne, for example, depicts the clash between "civilization" and "savagery." Announcing, to some extent, both modern Ethnology and the powerful wave of current relativism ("everything is worth"), he noted that the designation "barbarism" was probably not a universal content.

The work is not easy. He finds strangely on the disappearance of the moral Cannibal as theme of reflection, eclipsed by the State, "new agent of absolute cruelty." Read after dinner, for falling asleep or even to revise its philosophy.

ECONOMIC GANGSTERS. CORRUPTION, VIOLENCE AND THE POVERTY OF NATIONS

By Raymond Dr. Fisman and Edward Miguel, Princetown University Press, 2008, 350 pages

Dr. Raymond Fisman and Edward Miguel, two development economists, are part of a generation of teachers who spend as much per mathématisée that by implementing forward analysis of the silly and the unexpected. Their book on corruption and the abuse of a part of development policies is part of a family of popular books.

This text focuses on the reasons for the endemic poverty in some countries but independent for decades and Governments covered of billions of dollars in aid. Dr. Fisman and Miguel work on how to reduce a scourge that affects between one sixth and one-third of humanity (according to the statistical conventions). Familiar of the debates on the subject, they are studying the "dark side of the economy of development", in attacking the triptych "corruption, violence and poverty."

They highlight how corruptor and corrupt, smuggler or militia leader behaviors are economically rational. They must be combated as such. Indicating that we have all we something of an "economic gangster", they are the most powerful are those who have no compunction and have skills of organization. Thus, Al Capone, typical of the gangster rational, calculator and ill-intentioned, had an initial training of accountant!

What is important for our two detectives economists, is to establish facts and links between them. Correlations between the stock prices of some Indonesian companies and the State of health of President Suharto to identify the dependent institutions of power. The offsets between the digits of entry and exit of chickens (highly taxed by Customs) and turkeys (more low taxable) allow a measure of smuggling between Hong Kong and China. Weather data are mobilized to demonstrate that poverty and violence are not in a binding of type egg and chicken. Poverty breeds violence. In Africa, civil wars are often preceded by famine, themselves preceded by drought. Hence the need to organize international public intervention in part by the weather. In the end, registering in fact in one of the currents of development assistance, Dr. Fisman and Miguel argue for experimentation and evaluation, for the programming and planning. Read travel, train or plane.