How to be a Pirate: Quartermaster Edition 📙📈
‣ Adapted largely from The Invisible Hook. It’s great, go read it: https://amzn.to/36PLKSE
‣ Grey’s 2-hour Director’s Commentary: https://www.patreon.com/posts/37823377
## Special Thanks
Peter T. Leeson for reviewing a draft of the script. Check out his newest book, “WTF?!: An Economic Tour of the Weird”: https://amzn.to/3eEMm09
## Crowdfunders
Steven Snow, Bob Kunz, John Buchan, Nevin Spoljaric, Donal Botkin, BN-12, Chris Chapin, Richard Jenkins, Phil Gardner, Martin, سليمان العقل, Steven Grimm, Colin Millions, Saki Comandao, Jason Lewandowski, Andrea Di Biagio, David F Watson, Ben Schwab, Elliot Lepley, rictic, Bobby, Marco Arment, Shallon Brown, Shantanu Raj, emptymachine, George Lin, Henry Ng, Jeffrey Podis, Thunda Plum, Awoo, David Tyler, Derek Bonner, Derek Jackson, Fuesu, iulus, Jordan Earls, Joshua Jamison, Mikko, Nick Fish, Nick Gibson, Orbit_Junkie, Ron Bowes, Tómas Árni Jónasson, Tyler Bryant, Zach Whittle, Oliver Steele, Kermit Norlund, Kevin Costello, Ben Delo, Arctic May, Bear, chrysilis, David Palomares, Emil, Erik Parasiuk, Esteban Santana Santana, Freddi Hørlyck, Frederick The Great, John Rogers, ken mcfarlane, Leon, Maarten van der Blij, Peter Lomax, Rhys Parry, ShiroiYami, Tijmen van Dien, Tristan Watts-Willis, Veronica Peshterianu, Dag Viggo Lokøen, John Lee, Maxime Zielony, Bryan McLemore, Elizabeth Keathley, Alex Simonides, Felix Weis, Melvin Sowah, Giulio Bontadini, Paul Alom, Ryan Tripicchio, Scot Melville
## Music
David Rees: http://www.davidreesmusic.com
The Captain’s Version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YFeE1eDlD0
@IAmTheAce5 its circular. he likes doing that.
Wen surgeon version?
Hy Go fw my music on my channel 🌬️🌪️
So early I got to reply twice (: I’ll delete this later so I’m not mean
Loved your 0-part series on American Indians Grey!
1:56 the flags in order: First one is a standard flag used by several captains like Edward England,
2nd Jacquotte Delahaye (might have never existed)
3rd Edward Teach aka Blackbeard
4th Jean Thomas Dulaien
5th Bartholomew Roberts aka Black Bart
the two last ones were used by Edward Low (the green one for calling the other captains of his fleet for meeting in his own ship)
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@uknownada oh no it’s very real, just not Pirates of the Caribbean standard, it was more like quote of arms used for branding each pirate, and everyone liked a style of their own, for branding, you may surrender immediately if you find a flag known to flown by Blackbeard, and Blackbeard so happens to be branded as extremely torture happy.
Thanks a lot, I recognized only Teach’s flag.
Also the ABH and AMH on Black Bart’s flag stand for “A Barbadian’s Head” and “A Martiniquan’s Head”
@Ildskalli like most of us probably.
The Captain describing piracy: 😀
The Quartermaster describing piracy: :I
The Empire hiring pirates to mess with their competition (also known as privateers): 😉
@Algis the down side was the certain death by hanging and not a lot of places to go if people suspected that your wealth was explainable.
The captain is the one responsible for branding and PR after all, he has to paint a jolly picture 😉
All about the B R A N D I N G
i enjoyed the quartermaster’s description more
“I’d like to talk to that guy”
“I’d like to talk to the captain”
Oh god! It’s an infinite loop!
lul
It’s a trick to get more views, as now people will go back to the previous vid in order to verify
And the inquirer even looks up at the proper video card in each case.
To understand recursion, one must understand recursion.
“I’d like to talk to the manager”
“Personality matrices constraining them inside the law” is perhaps the most elegant way to say “normal” I have heard in a long time.
Agree
: )))))))))
@idkusername humans are not smart enough to fully understand themselves. Let alone other humans or the whole species
@idkusername Not if you define normal as “more common/usual”
@Let’s Not Humans are definitely smart enough to understand themselves if we are talking about their thought processes. It’s just rather hard because by merits of evolution we selectively bred ourselves to be reactionaries rather than calculating rationalists. This means that that (mostly) complete rational examination of the human mind is possible.
What we haven’t figured out about the human mind or biology is mostly a funding issue and not an intelligence issue.
@José Ángel Well, yes. Normal comes from the word norm. As in, what is most common. Predominant. That line of thinking, while mostly rational, is not a very popular thought process in say, gay bars.
5:36 the only time the Quartermaster smiles is when looking at the profits.
It’s also the only time the applicant whistles.
Drone_Better nope! 3:32
Well, the quartermaster inevitably must be someone who wants big riches and is willing to risk his life for it and break all laws as well.
I like how the quartermaster only ever _slightly_ smiles at 5:37, when he’s looking at money
Good eye! Aye.
You see mere gold, but I see the health of the ship, its company and its crew. I see our reputation. I see bigger cannons and better shot. I see better food that lasts longer, as we venture further and further into new riches to plunder. I see opportunity. I see the seeds of a giant orchard waiting to be planted and grown. I do not just see mere gold.
This is the first time I’ve heard anyone use the word “thusly”.
CGP Grey: “These videos show us that pirates aren’t like the movies.”
Also CGP Grey: “I wonder what BGM I should use for these videos…”
Next Video: TUMBLEWEED!!!
Not only are they different from what we see in the movies, they often worked FOR the Empire and not against it. Britain was well known for issuing Letters of Marque that gave permission to people to be privateers. To their enemies, they were pirates. Sir Francis Drake was very famous pirate/privateer and war hero.
Damn, Grey, we’ll never know if he becomes a pirate.
He traveled back through time and became a quartermaster on an English privateer ship turned pirate.
“So what’d you get your degree in?”
“Pirate Economics”
Welcome aboard matey!
“So you’re a pirate?”
“I prefer the term ‘maritime entrepreneur.'”
“Thief” is the correct term.
@Live The Future a privateer is not a pirate. the privateer has a host nation that they can still call home.
the privateer has a agreement that they where aloud to attack ships of enemy nations with the agreement to share the bounty with that nation. the nation would give the privateer a safe harbour.
a pirate did nit
sirBrouwer well, yes… that’s what being a state sanctioned pirate means…
Memes aside, yes, privateers actually are pirates. Pirating is the act of looting a ship, and that was essentially what they did. It doesn’t matter whether they agreed to restrict their target pool or if they were sponsored.
JollyJuice TLA?
@AverageBlonde they r more like socialists ;dividing the wealth in equal share , communism doesn’t use money
I feel like the justification that “if we don’t do it someone else will” is the beginning of a lot of really questionable decisions.
Also known as capitalism.
Yes. But also consider that if you want to make the thing being done stop, no amount of blaming/removing the person currently doing it is enough. Hanging lots of pirates doesn’t stop piracy all by itself.
“So, if there’s no surgeon, the carpenter will be surgeon.”
HOLY SHXT!
“Saw skills? Why did he put saw skills in the matrix?”
2 minutes later:
“Oh. Oh dear.”
remember he put “yarr” in too
Yea, that’s not a bone saw. That’s a wood saw, using that to cut off a limb is a good way to get dead. You want a lot of fine teeth, not a few big ones.
But then, this is me it the 21st century, is a 1st world country, saying this. You do what you have to do to survive.
@Sef Era any good carpenter will have a rough saw for large cuts and a fine saw for finish joinery (surprisingly important as a shipwright back in the day). The fine-toothed saw, assuming properly cleaned (conveniently, a little soap and brine works pretty well), it would be serviceable as a bone saw.
It’s really only in the past century or so that surgeons didn’t immediately jump to amputation for battle-related injury. They were called sawbones for a reason.
How to be a pirate: Crew edition when?
i would like it but it doesnt seem necessary
“or, How To Start A Small Business.”
5ilver42 Of course without all of those government regulations.
The customers of piracy aren’t the victims, the customers are the fences willing to buy discounted stolen goods.
The victims are “suppliers” subject to “intensive negotiating tactics”
You sound like you have a degree in marketing (from the PR expertise, not the economics).
I thought that initially, too. But then, these “customers” give the servicers money.
There may not necessarily be fences though. They might just bury their treasure of exchange it for food/resources.
@Ragnar Some ships just carried/carry around a lot of money, but for most the transport of value was something else.
@Ragnar It’s a myth that pirates buried their treasure. It may have happened very rarely, but pirates didn’t expect to live very long, so they pretty much spent their -booty- treasure on alcohol and women as quickly as possible.
IMPORTANT NOTE ABOUT “PIRATE PORTS”!
6:03 It should be noted that “Pirate-friendly ports” were a product of the same economy as… pirates. You’ll find good examples not in the Caribbean but in the poor, underdeveloped and *shallow* ports of North Africa, where legal trade was… unviable. Some ports were just doomed to being “pirate friendly” because of their geography. Such ports were frequented by Ottoman pirates and the pirates’ booty (which includes vital supplies that are much harder to buy legally) fed the ports.
P.S. Do note that I’m just paraphrasing Turkish historian Emrah Safa Gürkan.
Heh… ‘booty’
Honorary Mancunian i was gonna day that
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If you are interested with stuff like this (i.e: analytical explanation on fun historical stuff) then you might also want to check GREGORIUS Yamada’s “The Dragon, the Hero, and the Courier”. It’s a fun manga about a fantasy world where the logic of the real (cruel) world still exists.