The Ownership Society

Remember the old argument about how private social security accounts would make everyone a capitalist?

Looks like the pirates listened.

Piracy investor Sahra Ibrahim, a 22-year-old divorcee, was lined up with others waiting for her cut of a ransom pay-out after one of the gangs freed a Spanish tuna fishing vessel.

"I am waiting for my share after I contributed a rocket-propelled grenade for the operation," she said, adding that she got the weapon from her ex-husband in alimony.

"I am really happy and lucky. I have made $75,000 in only 38 days since I joined the 'company'."

Yup, the pirates have set up a market where folks can invest in pirate ventures in exchange for a share of the spoils.

It is a lucrative business that has drawn financiers from the Somali diaspora and other nations -- and now the gangs in Haradheere have set up an exchange to manage their investments.

One wealthy former pirate named Mohammed took Reuters around the small facility and said it had proved to be an important way for the pirates to win support from the local community for their operations, despite the dangers involved.

"Four months ago, during the monsoon rains, we decided to set up this stock exchange. We started with 15 'maritime companies' and now we are hosting 72. Ten of them have so far been successful at hijacking," Mohammed said.

"The shares are open to all and everybody can take part, whether personally at sea or on land by providing cash, weapons or useful materials ... we've made piracy a community activity."

And they say it's hard to raise venture capital in the current climate.

Markets in nothing: where's my kitfo?

Gallop reports New Zealand is third-ranked in the world potential net migration indices. Global survey nets for each country how many folks say they'd like to leave, how many folks would like to move there, and takes the net as a fraction of overall population. We could see a 170% increase in population, by these figures. And we have plenty of room for a doubling of population so long as they don't all want to be in Auckland.

Sixth from the bottom of the list: Ethiopia, where half the population wants to leave.

And I cannot find a single Ethiopean restaurant anywhere in New Zealand. Closest one: Melbourne.

Markets in everything: so many monkeys

Monkey-Picked Tea sounds more palatable than monkey-chewed coffee (and of course far more palatable than that other kind of monkey coffee).

Monkey business: A middle school in North Carolina lets the students purchase points for their tests.

Markets in Everything: most offensive SUV ever

It weighs four tonnes, is "rocket grenade-proof", has jewel-encrusted gauges, and gold-plated windows. And it costs a million euros. But check out the trim on the seats: whale penis leather.

Oh dear.

Why am I reminded of the Gilbert Gottfried routine where he proposed clubbing a baby seal to death, covering it in CFC hairspray, and launching it into the ozone layer?

Apparently, Aristotle Onassis had his yacht's barstools also covered in it.

Couldn't they have just gone for whaleskin to get the desired level of offensiveness without the added yuck factor? If you want fewer whales' skins to be used overall, should you prefer that whale penises be used, increasing the yuck factor and thereby reducing demand but also requiring more whales be killed per square metre used, or general whaleskin which has the opposite characteristics? Hmm.

HT: Bernard Hickey.

Markets in everything: I'll have what he ordered

Via BookOfJoe, a Japanese cafe that serves you what the last person ordered (and paid for), and serves the next person what you bought.

The guys behind the counter and I immediately launched into a humorous, protracted, Englishanese attempt to understand what the hell just happened. Through judicious fumbling, and after a great deal of precise hand-waving and mangled pronouns, it turned out to be something like this:

At this cafe, you get what the person before you ordered. The next person gets what you ordered.

Welcome to the Ogori cafe!

As I sat down to enjoy my surprise Appletizer, loving this insane idea and wondering what would happen if you tried it in America, a Japanese woman approached the cafe. Since she could actually speak Japanese, she could read the large sign at the front and, fortunately or unfortunately, got advanced warning of what she was in for. Before making a final decision on what to order, she quietly snuck up to me to try to ask me what I had ordered, knowing that it would be her unwavering refreshment destiny. The staff put a quick stop to her trickery, and I didn't answer.

Of course, regardless of what she ordered, she got the orange juice I ordered a few minutes earlier. But here's one of the moments that make this experiment cool: she actually chose orange juice, just like I did. So she got what she wanted. Ogori cafe synchronicity!

Before we left, there was one last thing hat had to be done.

Mike went up to the cafe, slapped down a couple thousand yen (~$25), and ordered a little bit of everything: some ice cream, some snacks, some candy, some drinks, a Japanese horn-of-mysterious-plenty intentionally set up as a shocking surprise for the next lucky customer. (After his order, Mike received single iced coffee.)

As we walked away from the cafe, with just the right amount of delay, we heard an extremely excited "arigato goazimasu!! thank you so much!!" yelled in our direction, from an ecstatic mom and her equally excited young son. They truly appreciated the surprise.

The comments thread suggests that this was more of an art project than a going business concern. But it's still a nice warning for blackboard market failure theorists. On the blackboard, nobody going here would ever order anything other than a glass of tap water and the shop would go bankrupt immediately. I wonder if the artist kept any data on sales over time and repeat customers.

Markets in everything: real silk

Ok, there isn't really a market in it yet. The sole item produced cost over half a million dollars to make; they're hoping to sell it to a museum. But it is beautiful.
It took more than a million spiders and a team of Malagasy weavers. Wow.

I wish there were video of their silk extraction process.

Nice reporting and pictures at NY Times, linked above, as well as at Discovery, Wired.

Want to touch....

Things I'd never considered: Talmudic law edition

The National Post hosts a podcast today, and accompanying print edition, highlighting the procedures necessary for Orthodox Jews contemplating in vitro fertilization. Unsurprisingly, it's pretty complicated. The prohibition on masturbation, combined with the prohibition on condom use, make semen collection difficult. The solution?

"According to Jewish law, a man cannot ejaculate and spill his seed, he cannot waste his seed," Rabbi Jacobson explained. "To accommodate this, the couple can engage in intercourse using a special pierced condom," he said. The special condom captures the sample, while also leaving room for the possibility of conception.

Tyler likely would have tagged this "Markets in everything: Kosher pierced condoms".

The podcast has details not covered in the print story, for those who need all the details.

Update: the more I think about this, the more I think about cheating at solitaire....

On the other side, the article notes a low low price of about $100-$500 for a service that watches your gametes like a hawk and makes extra sure of no mixups. Seems like a bargain that anyone in that market would grab. If the notional cost of a mixup is say $7 million (pulled out of the air based just on VSL measures; I have a hard time imagining the compensating differential that would make me equally happy across world-states), seems pretty cheap even if the baseline probability of mixup is pretty low.