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Pirates 'that they were the forerunners of the modern private enterprise and democratic shareholder rights'? What? This is a mountainous unsubstantiated statement you've pulled out of the air.

To help SagelyGuru out, the book The Invisible Hook by economist Peter T. Leeson talks about how pirates adopted the system of constitutional democracy more than fifty years before the US and had written contracts detailing how much each member should get, including the captain.

http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8850.html

http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2009/05/leeson_on_pirat.htm...



They where probably more like guidelines - though shares for PMC Contractors aka mercenarys go back much further to Italy with the condottieri.




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