I am glad the pirate issue has returned to the news, as I failed to get in a few points last time.
These ‘externalities’ as they were once called, i.e. pirates, are always less exogenous than they may appear. Crony corporatism, of course, provides the right conditions for this:
The UN special envoy for Somalia on Friday sounded the alarm about rampant illegal fishing and the dumping of toxic waste off the coast of the lawless African nation.“Because there is no (effective) government, there is so much irregular fishing from European and Asian countries,” Ahmedou Ould Abdallah told reporters.
He said he had asked several international non-governmental organizations, including Global Witness, which works to break the links between natural resource exploitation, conflict, corruption, and human rights abuses worldwide, “to trace this illegal fishing, illegal dumping of waste.”
“It is a disaster off the Somali coast, a disaster (for) the Somali environment, the Somali population,” he added.
Ould Abdallah said the phenomenon helps fuel the endless civil war in Somalia as the illegal fishermen are paying corrupt Somali ministers or warlords for protection or to secure fake licenses.
When will we get off our soapboxes and regulate ourselves as well as we would regulate our competitors? Is all the human rights stuff really just trash talk? Where does it all end?