I’m sure Tyler Cowen did a “Markets in Everything” blog post about Somali piracy back when this article first came out. How could he not with this sort of quote right at the top:

Like any business, Somali piracy can be explained in purely economic terms. It flourishes by exploiting the incentives that drive international maritime trade. The other parties involved — shippers, insurers, private security contractors, and numerous national navies — stand to gain more (or at least lose less) by tolerating it than by putting up a serious fight. As for the pirates, their escalating demands are a method of price discovery, a way of gauging how much the market will bear.

But, as my friend Miguel Centellas rightly points out, the interactive article is also a nice teaching tool for non-economists:

This story from Wired is useful for discussion of the politics around piracy in places like Somalia (or other failed states). But it can also be a great way to illustrate some of the principles of rational choice. I use it in my research methods class to illustrate elegant/information data design/presentation. If you want to assign this to a class, be sure you download the PDF version available from Wired.

(via pol102)