3.1 KiB
[RT?][DC?] Murder Hobos and the Economics of Piracy
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Author: u/ToaKraka https://i.imgur.com/OQGHleQ.png*
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URL: http://www.critical-hits.com/blog/2015/07/27/murder-hobos-and-the-economics-of-piracy/
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Score: 16
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Created: 2015-07-27T13:26:53
Post:
Comments:
u/ToaKraka [+3] https://i.imgur.com/OQGHleQ.png (3 seconds later)
Excerpt:
These pirates are competing over the same fixed pool of rewards. Pirate ship concerns (i.e., actual physical pirates) will multiply and fill the ocean while risk remains low and reward remains high providing ample opportunities to level up. However, as pirates continue to enter the market, pirate ship numbers will reach an equilibrium when the risk to reward balance becomes near even and profit dries up. Killing pirates keeps this point further in the future but the allure will continue to draw perfectly good naval crews into lives of piracy.
At the equilibrium point, it becomes to everyone’s benefit – the pirates, the Murder Hobos, the governments wanting a cut – to push over the balance so the risk and reward moves from the fat, tasty merchantmen to the pirates themselves with their loads of fat cargo and pirate treasure. Then, pirate war breaks out. Strong pirate companies will eliminate weaker pirate private contractors. Pirates continue murdering other pirates until the market clears of competition and profit margins again rise. Rinse, repeat.
Also:
The warlock economist looks at the King’s Letters of Marque. She points out to the rest of her Murder Hobo crew another way to optimize their mission: corporate mergers. Take over ships and, instead of murdering the crew and taking their stuff as is the Murder Hobo way, force them to join a flag. [...] The Murder Hobos will simply corner the piracy market.
The Paladin, of course, objects to abusing their King’s Letters of Marque like this. That’s why the rest of the party leaves him on an island.
Finally:
A year later, the Murder Hobos retire from their life of state-sponsored high seas terrorism rich as Lords. They leave behind their legends as Pirate Kings built on a loose yet massive amalgamated confederation of pirates and wheat. They built their Pirate Isle to store their reaped gold and magic. Perhaps the mission wasn’t carried out to spec but the Murder Hobos had lots of high seas fun.
The pirates aren’t destroyed. This scheme just makes more pirates. No amount of military force will kill speculators in an open market when speculation is possible. Speculation, like life, finds a way. The pirates prey on merchantmen and, then, when there are too many pirates, each other. The cycle continues with or without Murder Hobos.
The pirates finally disperse when the King lowers his wheat tariffs, signs a treaty with his rival foreign government, and wheat prices drop dramatically. Without the easy, fast, low risk, high reward profits of wheat, pirates don’t exist.