Management of Freakonomics

Deciding to explore other business dialogues, I had to satisfy my curiosity of a reading referenced to me by a fellow economist in my undergraduate studies. The first edition of the book, entitled Freakonomics, (Dubner, Levitt 2005) provides a redefined approach to how business persons and the general public view the modern world. I wanted to obtain a copy of something up-to-date, thus I ‘Googled’ the term and found the authors website: http://www.freakonomics.com/

Since my official blog specifically entertains concepts that pertain to management ideals, I decided to explore the website’s blog section for details. What I uncovered was a breadth of current events that deal with domestic and international occurrences, many that occupied by idle time. The article that really sparked my interest was titled, “Somali Pirates Practice Inventory Management,” and was written on March 16th, 2011.



Apparently, the Somalia Pirates have become more sophisticated in their illegal day-to-day business practices. In fact, a group of Somali pirates announced that “they’re cutting asking prices for hostages by 20 percent — to speed up the negotiation process, make room for more hostages and take in more cash…we want to free ships within a short period of time instead of keeping them for a long time and incurring more expenses in guarding them. We have to free them at a lower ransom so that we can hijack more ships.” http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/03/16/somali-pirates-practice-inventory-management/

This statement is rather bold, considering that the unidentified “spokes-pirate” is starting to apply modern business and economics aptitude into an otherwise psychological ordeal. Unlike ordeals that include kidnapping, hostages, or ransoms, the Somali pirates actually think that the western viewpoints of business will translate into large sums of money. I’m not sure where they obtained their education; however, I will say their ideas sound trivial, but more-or-less rather ludicrous!