Pirates do not take what the market will bear. They just take.

Some lawyers make a good living and other lawyers barely make ends meet. Lawyers, just like non-lawyers, are often out of work because of cutbacks and economic forces beyond their control. The practice of law may be a calling, but it is also a job. Lawyers hope that if they work hard they will make a lot of money. (It's called capitalism and it seems to work.)

Pirates are not to my knowledge subject to market forces. They plunder at every opportunity, during both good and bad times. I'm not sure that piracy is as much a calling as it is a form of sociopathological behavior.

Here’s a fact that may help dismiss the correlation between lawyers and pirates: lawyers work for free. That's right. Lawyers do pro bono work, assisting individuals and organizations that cannot afford to pay for legal services. Law firms encourage pro bono work. Lawyers and law firms donate to charities that help members of society.

Pirates prey on rich and poor alike. They murder those that cannot pay for their "services".

I have to write about tort reform, as lawyers' unwillingness to support this populist notion makes them mercenaries in some people's minds.

Richard Nixon, not the poster boy for . . . well pretty much anything in America, let alone economic acumen, imposed wage and price controls in the Seventies and was properly vilified for it. Wages and prices skyrocketed once the government thumb was removed from the free market. (I wonder if government mandated Medicare caps are a source of the inflation of medical costs.) Amazingly, politically conservative politicians want tort reform. Conservatives should be marching against tort reform as a form of government mandated wage controls, not to mention a hallmark of Socialism.

Liberal politicians like tort reform too. I expect that it makes them feel good: nobody should make too much money, unless it can be taxed and redistributed. I believe that is in the liberal politician handbook.

Conservatives and liberals both want tort reform, so why don't we have it? Simple. Lawyers are civic-minded and won't contribute to any campaign that would curtail their livelihood. Is this wrong? Not really. I have no doubt that bakers would raise their rolling pins in anger and contempt if politicians tried to tamp down the price of baguettes. Just ask Marie Antoinette.

Pirates adore wage and price controls, as it gives them a free hand to set up black markets. They might even encourage people to sign petitions for wage and price controls, which would be a step toward bringing pirates into the political system. Pirates might, in time, even vote -- for corruption of course.

Attorneys can be -- and this is true -- full of bluster. Sort of like pirates . . . There is a key difference though: lawyers rant and rage to put matters right rather than to make matters wrong. This difference, no doubt, is a small one to those that prefer their falsehoods unleavened by accuracy.

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