Peter T. Leeson Interview

An interview with Peter T. Leeson, the author of The Invisible Hook: The Hidden Economics of Pirates. Leeson takes us inside the wily world of late seventeenth and early eighteenth-century pirates uncovering the hidden economics behind pirates' notorious, entertaining, and sometimes downright shocking behavior. Why did pirates fly flags of Skull & Bones? Why did they create a "pirate code"? And what made them so successful? Leeson uses economics to examine these and other infamous aspects of piracy while arguing that the pirate customs we know and love resulted from pirates responding rationally to prevailing economic conditions in the pursuit of profits. Pirates understood the advantages of constitutional democracy — a model they adopted more than fifty years before the United States did so. Pirates also initiated an early system of workers' compensation, regulated drinking and smoking, and in some cases practiced racial tolerance and equality. Leeson contends that pirates exemplified the virtues of vice — their self-seeking interests generated socially desirable effects and their greedy criminality secured social order. Pirates proved that anarchy could be organized. Revealing the democratic and economic forces propelling history's most colorful criminals, The Invisible Hook establishes pirates' trailblazing relevance to the contemporary world. Peter T. Leeson is the BB&T Professor for the Study of Capitalism in the Department of Economics at George Mason University. Recorded May 5, 2009