I learned some cool stuff at the Real Pirates exhibit at the Franklin Institute in Philly last month. (see http://whydah.com/)

Like scrappy startups, these pirates did some things differently, which helped tilt the odds in their favor.
For one, they didn’t discriminate against different racial groups. When they captured a slave ship, they removed much of the top deck, including the captain’s tower, and the barrier that kept the slaves separate from the crew. This made the ship less top-heavy, and FASTER. Advantage: pirates.

I like your style! The only problem with embracing one’s inner pirate is that nobody trusted them and everyone wanted to destroy them. It’s the old “farmers vs. samurai” conflict from The Seven Samurai (or the Magnificent Seven). Pirates played an important role in early Jamaican history, but the English settlers who benefited from their existence wanted to get rid of them all the same.

But you were really talking about Robin Hood tactics (IMHO). Those have always been viewed as righteous, and I would agree. What if the powers that be every so often asked themselves what Robin Hood would do, and then do it themselves?

“We need to focus harder on the goals than we do the infrastructure, the excuses, the labels, and everything else that gets between us and a goal…

Throw away all the excuses. Here’s where we tie in the pirate ships. Pirates didn’t give a rat’s ass what their ship looked like, or even whether it was their ship in the first place. They took whatever floated and could carry cannons and men, and they lobbed themselves at targets. It was messy. It was ugly. It was warfare, but they weren’t ones to fret or struggle with their infrastructure. What defined a pirate ship? That the pirates were aboard it. That’s about it….

This isn’t about chaos. It’s not about throwing everything away. It’s about knowing which parts are vital to moving through the waters, versus the pieces we keep around because that’s what we always did.”