Archives for the 'economics' tag
Little Shops of Horrors
I’ve been remiss in blogging this noteworthy story of the really free market in Somalia:
But in northern coastal towns like Haradhere, Eyl and Bossaso, the pirate economy is thriving thanks to the money pouring in from pirate ransoms that have reached $30 million this year alone.
In Haradhere, residents came out in droves to celebrate as the looming oil ship came into focus this week off the country’s lawless coast. Businessmen started gathering cigarettes, food and cold glass bottles of orange soda, setting up small kiosks for the pirates who come to shore to re-supply almost daily.
…
The attackers generally treat their hostages well in anticipation of a big payday, hiring caterers on shore to cook spaghetti, grilled fish and roasted meat that will appeal to a Western palate. They also keep a steady supply of cigarettes and drinks from the shops on shore.
Claims of fair treatment aren’t shared by all of the pirates’ prisoners, and you can ask these two journalists how they feel about being kidnapped at gunpoint. Still and all, I think it’s a fascinating tale of trickle-down economics. So in an effort to engender something besides the sound of crickets in the Crispy comments, I submit this question for discussion: Are these corsair towns hives of scum and villainy to be eradicated without prejudice, or should the pirates and their camp followers be allowed to exist, with the ransoms acting as a sort of foreign aid for the Somali food-service industry?
Photo credit “Big Daddy” Nelson, who sold me more than a bottle of rum.
Mack of All Trades
With Baylen about to be pinched for running strange meats across state lines, the WSJ suggests he may want to keester a fish before heading to federal prison:
When Larry Levine helped prepare divorce papers for a client a few years ago, he got paid in mackerel. Once the case ended, he says, “I had a stack of macks.”
Mr. Levine and his client were prisoners in California’s Lompoc Federal Correctional Complex. Like other federal inmates around the country, they found a can of mackerel — the “mack” in prison lingo — was the standard currency.
“It’s the coin of the realm,” says Mark Bailey, who paid Mr. Levine in fish.
And just like certain assets topping our government’s Xmas wish list, mackerel is valuable precisely because of its undesirability:
Unlike those more expensive delicacies, former prisoners say, the mack is a good stand-in for the greenback because each can (or pouch) costs about $1 and few — other than weight-lifters craving protein — want to eat it.
But piscine procurement in the penitentiary is not as easy as throwing an M-80 into a school of jumping baitfish. It seems the free market is discouraged on the inside almost as much as it is out here:
The Bureau of Prisons views any bartering among prisoners as fishy. “We are aware that inmates attempt to trade amongst themselves items that are purchased from the commissary,” says bureau spokeswoman Felicia Ponce in an email. She says guards respond by limiting the amount of goods prisoners can stockpile. Those who are caught bartering can end up in the “Special Housing Unit” — an isolation area also known as the “hole” — and could lose credit they get for good behavior.
Makes sense. The dampening of a trade economy never leads to privation and violence, right?
The Journal has the full story here.
The Economics of Food Bartering in a WWII POW Camp
I came across this fascinating little piece on the economics of WWII P.O.W. camps, which has (not surprisingly) a heavy focus on food.
After allowance has been made for abnormal circumstances, the social institutions, ideas and habits of groups in the outside world are to be found reflected in a Prisoner of War Camp. It is an unusual but a vital society.
One aspect of social oganization (sic) is to be found in economic activity, and this, along with other manifestations of a group existence, is to be found in any P.O.W. camp.
[...]
Between individuals there was active trading in all consumer goods and in some services. Most trading was for food against cigarettes or other foodstuffs, but cigarettes rose from the status of a normal commodity to that of currency. RMk.s existed but had no circulation save for gambling debts, as few articles could be purchased with them from the canteen.
Our supplies consisted of rations provided by the detaining power and (principally) the contents of Red Cross food parcels – tinned milk, jam, butter, biscuits, bully, chocolate, sugar, etc., and cigarettes. So far the supplies to each person were equal and regular. Private parcels of clothing, toilet requisites and cigarettes were also received, and here equality ceased owing to the different numbers despatched and the vagaries of the post. All these articles were the subject of trade and exchange.
[...]
The unity of the market and the prevalence of a single price varied directly with the general level of organization and comfort in the camp. A transit camp was always chaotic and uncomfortable: people were overcrowded, no one knew where anyone else was living, and few took the trouble to find out. Organization was too slender to include an Exchange and Mart board, and private advertisements were the most that appeared. Consequently a transit camp was not one market but many. The price of a tin of salmon is known to have varied by two cigarettes in 20 between one end of a hut and the other. Despite a high level of organization in Italy, the market was morcellated in this manner at the first transit camp we reached after our removal to Germany in the autumn of 1943. In this camp – Stalag VIIA at Moosburg in Bavaria – there were up to 50,000 prisoners of all nationalities. French, Russians, Italians, and Jugo-Slavs were free to move about within the camp; British and Americans were confined to their compounds, although a few cigarettes given to a sentry would always procure permission for one or two men to visit other compounds. The people who first visited the highly organized French trading centre with its stalls and known prices found coffee extract – relatively cheap among the tea-drinking English – commanding a fancy price in biscuits or cigarettes, and some enterprising people made small fortunes that way. (Incidentally we found out later that much of the coffee went “over the wire” and sold for phenomenal prices at black market cafes in Munich: some of the French prisoners were said to have made substantial sums in RMk.s. This was one of the few occasions on which our normally closed economy came into contact with other economic worlds.)
I’m all about morcellation. More here. Via Kottke.
