Pirate Entrepreneurship, Oversight Blocked on Mercenary Army in Iraq, and Jim Grant Reviews New Bastiat Collection

Wow, check out this profile of Max Hardberger in the Telegraph yesterday:

Hardberger is a 62-year-old adventurer from Louisiana who specialises in stealing back ships that have been fraudulently seized in corrupt ports, mostly in Latin America and the Caribbean.

He describes himself as a 'vessel repossession specialist’, a kind of maritime repo man who ghosts into tropical hellhole ports, outwits the guards and authorities, and ghosts out again with a 5,000- or 10,000-ton cargo ship, usually under cover of darkness and preferably during a heavy rainstorm.

Whether it’s good or not depends on your perspective. For his clients he is a godsend, well worth the $100,000-plus that he charges to retrieve a ship. To foreign port authorities, judges, coastguards, naval commanders and government officials, he is a flagrant and notorious law-breaker, and if they ever manage to catch him at it, he can expect a long sentence in a vile prison.

In a world lacking a competitive, market based justice system, Harberger opts for taking justice in his own hands for his clients.  This business is apparently fruitful enough for him to do it though it comes with quite a bit of danger.  While the U.S. justice system is not as corrupt as those of Latin America countries, government officials will never be above the level of taking bribes.  What Harberger is doing is true justice for those who have lost their possession even though another government may have designated a ship to be the property of someone else.  It is a testament to the corruptibility of modern governments and the market ingenuity of those looking to be paid for correcting injustices.  Speaking of ingenuity:

The desperate ship owner may then decide to call Hardberger, or more precisely his company Vessel Extractions, LLC, based in New Orleans. 'The first phase is for me to get my expenses and go into the port to do my research. I either keep a very low profile, or I hire the youngest prostitute I can find and pretend to be a drunken old American ship captain who has gone native with a teenage girlfriend. There’s one in every port so people see me in that role and they don’t look past it, and I can look around and ask questions without attracting attention.’

Prostitutes, in fact, are a key resource for Hardberger. 'I don’t consort with them and I’m one of the few seamen I know who never has,’ he says. 'But I’ll send them on board to gather information, or entice the guards away from the ship. I’ll give them a bottle of rum that I’ve mixed with crushed-up sleeping pills and tell them to start pouring drinks. It goes without saying that most prostitutes are excellent actresses, and I’ve found them extremely useful.’

Since I am on the topic of government corruption, see the latest example of the rampant corruption that embodies and profits from our foreign policy via Wired:

By January 2012, the State Department will do something it’s never done before: command a mercenary army the size of a heavy combat brigade. That’s the plan to provide security for its diplomats in Iraq once the U.S. military withdraws. And no one outside State knows anything more, as the department has gone to war with its independent government watchdog to keep its plan a secret. Stuart Bowen, the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR), is essentially in the dark about one of the most complex and dangerous endeavors the State Department has ever undertaken, one with huge implications for the future of the United States in Iraq. “Our audit of the program is making no progress,” Bowen tells Danger Room.
For months, Bowen’s team has tried to get basic information out of the State Department about how it will command its assembled army of about 5,500 private security contractors. How many State contracting officials will oversee how many hired guns? What are the rules of engagement for the guards? What’s the system for reporting a security danger, and for directing the guards’ response?
And for months, the State Department’s management chief, former Ambassador Patrick Kennedy, has given Bowen a clear response: That’s not your jurisdiction.

Look for President Obama to run on drawing troops out of Iraq but fail to mention that mercenary armies will still be there.  Our presence in Iraq is not going to end anytime soon.  Meanwhile, the war profiteering will continue.

Jim Grant has a great Wall Street Journal book review on a collection of Frederic Bastiat's writings in English for the first time entitled "The Man and Statesman."  Right off the bat, Grant leads with a classic Bastiat line:

Because nobody else can understand them, modern economists speak to one another. They gossip in algebra and remonstrate in differential calculus. And when the pungently correct mathematical equation doesn't occur to them, they awkwardly fall back on the English language, like a middle-aged American trying to remember his high-school Spanish. The economist Frédéric Bastiat, who lived in the first half of the 19th century, wrote in French, not symbols. But his words—forceful, clear and witty—live to this day.

It is always surprising to see how similar Bastiat's writing over 100 years ago are to the troubles we go through today.  Bastiat's writings have made huge impacts, but we still have a long way to go before they are fully adhered to.  The most interesting part of the review is Grant's mentioning of Democratic congressmen mentioning Bastiat in order criticize tariff legislation by the GOP.  If only those Congressmen would use Bastiat's stunning critiques to analyze their own idiotic positions.  Overall, Gran'ts review is highly recommended.