privateers

Those riches would not have lasted without a Navy to protect the merchants from piracy or privateers.

Incredibly apt analogy, even down to the privateers part - Americans were perfectly happy to fund terrorists in Northern Ireland.

Pretty much all the major European powers handed out letters of marque to privateers/mercenaries though and the practice predated buccaneers and the Spanish Main.

They do have a cost capped formula intended for Privateers called LMP2.

What's it called when a state unleashes privateers on its citizens?

Maybe for the next Wired exercise in futurism, they could imagine an educational system that isn't being suffocated to death by anti-tax zealots and privatizers / privateers...

The more relevant analogy would be privateers.

And you're clearly confusing pirates with privateers.

They sound little better than privateers.

Pirates were predominantly privateers working under the authorization of a letter of Marque, and at any time could be a pirate to any of the three other major empires in the area.

With that as a recourse, it'd be easy for anyone to essentially create an army of privateers out there raiding your competitors (okay maybe a navy would have been a better metaphor).

In patent wars it often doesn't work because there are privateers (NPE patent trolls) which have nothing to lose and MS and other patent aggressors readily employ them to do the dirty work for them in order to avoid retaliation.

Back then pirates operating under the authority of a nation-state were "privateers" and carried a letter of marque.

From the comment on Amazon: > Mac McAleer: The author deliberately stretches the definition of "invaded" to include short military interventions and actions by pirates, privateers and armed explorers.

Meanwhile privateers sunk or captured 2200+ British ships during the Revolution - I'm sure this was all "organized" militia and every one of those cannons had a permit and taxes paid.

They were often called "privateers" and were organised much more democratically than their competitors: the cruel and authocratic navies which were in the same business of robbery, only on a much greater and more organised scale.

Privateers sunk over 600 British vessels during the Revolution - do you think they needed permits for their cannonry?

Privateers could and did frequently board allied or neutral nations vessels who were flying false flag for safety and could be held liable for damages.

Privateers had to obey the laws of war, not doing so could result in punishment from forfeiture of the prize, to tort payments for killing/injuring crew members if they were cruel.