Stats for nerds
4recommend
4mentions
4people
2020–2022years
100% recommend
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Kidnap: Inside the Ransom Business by Anja Shortland, which is a fascinating exploration of kidnap insurance, and argues that it’s been a force in keeping down instances of kidnap for ransom by effectively regulating the market for kidnappings.
Escape, by Marie Le Conte, which does an excellent job of articulating why the internet feels like it lost its soul as the world jumped on board. It’s a wonderful love letter to the internet of the early 2000s, mourning the loss of the crazy Wild West that was.
What If? 2 by Randall Monroe, of XKCD fame. The third of his books applying serious science to ridiculous scenarios. If you hang out here you’ll probably enjoy it.
- For anyone interested in this topic, I recommend the book "Kidnap: Inside the Ransom Business" by Anja Shortland
Absolutely fascinating how this industry works!
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07L5PKK5M/ref=kinw_myk_ro...
- This is a good read on the topic (the author has been on a few podcasts also)
https://www.amazon.com/Kidnap-Inside-Business-Anja-Shortland...
TLDR: Its basically an efficient market in some countries, most people have kidnap insurance even though they dont know it (as their employer isnt allowed to diclose this insurance), the insurers know the criminals going rate, and can cut off their entire business if they break the "rules"
- Your strawman seems a bit stupid. Real life companies are more long term greedy and ingenious. (Even if only because competition forces them to.) So even if there's an incentive to cooperate with a blackmail attempt that's already happening, there's also a strong incentive to get a reputation that prevents further blackmailing.
If you have some time, listen to this podcast episode https://www.econtalk.org/anja-shortland-on-kidnap/
> Anja Shortland of King's College London talks about her book Kidnap with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. Kidnapping is relatively common in parts of the world where government authority is weak. Shortland explores this strange, frightening, but surprisingly orderly world. She shows how the interaction between kidnappers, victims, and insurance companies creates a somewhat predictable set of prices for ransom and creates a relatively high chance of the safe return of those who are kidnapped.
The broad incentives in kidnapping cases are comparable to what we discussed. As far as I can tell the market for kidnapping insurance doesn't have any special regulation, so perhaps a good proxy for how a free market might operate.
One of the main takeaways for me was that when eg an oil or mining concern buys kidnapping insurance for their employees, the insurance company strictly insists that employees not be told that there is insurance.
