Claims

The quartermaster functioned as a separation of powers and ballast against the captain: the captain had unquestioned authority only in battle, while the quartermaster held most day-to-day power, was democratically elected, was checked by the crew on major decisions, and indirectly competed with the captain for the top office—so both played to ordinary crew members' interests.

The ultimate check against a tyrannical pirate captain was crew sentiment backed by the credible threat of a violent revolt, which—unlike on a merchant ship—carried no legal penalty since mutiny against a pirate captain was not a punishable crime, whereas a merchant crew's mutiny was punishable by death.

Because pirates carried weapons freely while merchant sailors' arms were often locked away, the non-monopoly on force among the crew acted as an important check on the captain's tyranny—analogous to the Second Amendment's logic that distributed force checks sovereign power.

Pirates deserve qualified admiration because, while all thieves should be condemned, some give the world something back—pirates demonstrated the effectiveness of self-governance and experimented with checks and balances, separated powers, and constitutional democracy more than half a century before Madison and before the English Bill of Rights, and their doing so as violent outlaws shows the robustness of these forms of social organization.

Governance—a system of privately created rules and means of enforcement—can emerge without government; a punishment one voluntarily agreed to ex ante (even violent punishment by a third party like the quartermaster) is governance rather than coercion, distinguishing voluntary self-governance from a non-contractual 'social contract.'

Early Somali pirates were uninteresting from a governance standpoint because their 'six guys in a skiff' in-and-out ransom operations did not form floating societies, but as their population grew and they spent extended time together at land bases, a new pirate society with private law, rules on inter-pirate theft and prisoner treatment, and a mobile court emerged—because the cells are connected yet geographically separated.