“Last year in Ideas, Joanna Weiss wrote that the George Mason economist Peter T. Leeson was at work on a book that would demonstrate that ‘the democratic tenets we hold so dear were used to great effect on pirate ships. Checks and balances. Social insurance. Freedom of expression.’ Leeson’s book is finally here, ‘The Invisible Hook: The Hidden Economics of Pirates.’ And, true enough, the economist gives democratic aspects of pirate life their due. (Pirates elected their captains, for example, and could depose them by a vote.) But what most stands out is just how eager Leeson is to rescue pirates from the clutches of left-wing historians and social theorists, and to claim them as avatars of right-wing economic theory. Pirates, Leeson suggests, were avid Hayekians a full two centuries before the Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek was born.” (0630/09)