Privateers and Pirates

The difference is that pirates were criminals while corsairs acted with the authorization of a state

In the collective imagination, pirates and privateers are almost synonyms.

The core business was the same. The difference is that pirates were criminals while corsairs acted with the authorization of a state. Privateers would receive a course letter (a special pass or a license) from a state, authorizing them to plunder ships.

The license was therefore designed to be an authorization for delinquency.
In fact, those who hold a license can carry out actions that are normally considered to be at risk for the community, provided that they can demonstrate their ability to manage them in a non-dangerous way.

In general, a license is used to authorize behaviors that are normally prohibited without possessing any particular skill.
It makes no sense to grant a license for behaviors that are normally free. It is no coincidence that there is no license for walking, breathing or cycling. But there are licenses to drive airplanes, trucks or tanks.

The fundamental principle of law requires that all behaviors that are not explicitly prohibited are lawful. It would actually be impossible to do otherwise, namely is to draft some sort of manual of all permitted behaviors: it would be virtually infinite in size and length.

A license is always provided for in situations where there are prohibitions. The paradoxical thing is the ploy to take away freedoms that belong to fundamental human rights to then give them back through a document.
The very act of establishing a pass or a license for everyday behaviors creates a society divided into privateers and pirates, where the behaviors of the two categories are the same, but the latter are discriminated against because of the lack of a course letter.

The risk is that, should the reasoning whereby all behaviors must be authorized by the bureaucratic machinery gain ground, society would become an unlivable place, where no natural freedom, such as having children or fulfilling oneself, would theoretically be allowed without formal authorization.

This is why highly sensitive people are so alarmed by the increasing amount of measures that are tightening people’s lives, distancing them more and more from the true state of nature.

RES HUMANA