In the case of Liberia, the country has no relations to shipping and the ship and as well as the corporate registry were given to an American company called LISCR (Liberia Ship Corporate Registry Football) whose employees have probably never been in Liberia's capital Monrovia … most Americans of course would not want to spend any time in Liberia – too much crime and violence, and now there is Ebola too.

In the banking world, the US is on a crusade against other offshore locations such as Switzerland while protecting its own offshore locations. In the naval world, on the other hand, the two major offshore locations – Liberia and Panama – have already been under (at least) strong American influence.

All the benefits, none of the responsibility.

Unlike land-based police protection, I think naval battles are slow enough and ships identifiable enough that the service could be made excludible (and being rivalrous as well, it would then become a private good).

Even just the Gulf of Aden is 438,000 square kilometers, which is roughly the size of California. Admittedly you don't need to cover all that area, as the effective range of pirate speedboats is limited, so you're really just covering the coastlines. Even still, that's a lot of space.

Satellites, sensor networks, etc., could help virtually shrink that playing field, so to speak. Just-in-time response is still a manpower issue, though. Strong signaling and prevention is more effective than constant response, though I'm not sure how you apply a blanket of prevention selectively to the ships that are paying for it. Flags or color signals, perhaps.

[EDIT: Seems you're back in black. Your comment was greying when I first came across it.]

1. In many cases the US Navy has its own interests in combating piracy, and isn't interested in providing an opt-out from its police services. Somalia is one area, where one of the goals of the anti-piracy initiative is to cut off the funds flowing to militant groups who use piracy as a source of income. On the other hand, this means the question of freeriding is less important, because the US Navy is providing and paying for the patrols for its own reasons, not (primarily) as a service to shipowners.

2. Some kind of maritime-law reform would be needed. Traditional maritime law has at least some kind of emergency-assistance duty. Launching a heroic rescue with helicopters and special forces is almost certainly not part of it, so that could be withheld. But under current maritime law you couldn't just completely ignore a distress signal and refuse to attempt to help, even when in a position to easily do so.

I suppose another deviously brilliant solution would be to send some CIA fixer types out to the Somali warlords, bribing them to avoid ships with X, Y, Z symbols on them (whoever's paying the Navy Tax). Probably less money spent doing this than building and keeping loads of gunboats in the water at all times. Again, though, this creates its own negative externalities and perverse incentives. Plus, you're now in the business of keeping certain warlords in power, and we all know how well that usually works out for us.

America has been down that road before.

After the revolution, American merchant ships lost the protection of the British navy and had to fend for themselves in the Mediterranean against pirates from Barbary States of North Africa. At first, the young republic tried precisely what you advocate—send over some fixer with a big bag of cash. In 1795 the tribute came to 1/6 of the nation's entire budget, leading to the creation of the American Navy in order to end the problem by force rather than with cash.

This led to the First Barbary War. Some historians (like Michael Oren) even claim that the issue of piracy was one of the catalysts for revising the Articles of Confederation and forming a stronger central government.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Barbary_War

Now, as I mentioned, this creates all sorts of perverse economic incentives. First, it encourages infighting among the warlords, further destabilizing the region as each band or group jockeys for top position. Second, it could just as easily be taken by the pirates as a sign of weakness. They'll want to test the limits of that weakness, either by raising their prices over time, by taking more ships for ransom. Finally, it legitimizes some no doubt unsavory leaders, whose American ties would cause deeper sociopolitical problems for us when they got out.

I don't see why - people could also buy protection service from non-US navies, or simply arm the crew. It's not as if the US Navy is the only way to ward off pirates.

I could be wrong, but I seem to recall reading about the Chinese navy taking out a few pirates a while back. (No dramatic rescue of crew held hostage, however.)

And the pirates also almost never hit container ships because their decks are too high and they go too fast. Maersk Alabama was an anomaly, they were actually transporting food aid to East Africa so they traveled much slower and closer to Somalia.

The pirates mainly hit tanker/bulker and LNG ships.

I worked at a container line at the height of the piracy in 2009-2010 and management was basically not concerned with it. The ships are insured anyway, they just added an Aden Piracy Surcharge to Asia-Europe freight to cover the premium increases.

I work in the shipping/logistics industry and I assure you, Somalian piracy is not a threat to Wal-Mart's supply chain. It's barely a blip on their radar. If one container ship were hit and a few of their containers were on board it would not hurt them financially, they have cargo insurance anyway. Storms at sea are a much bigger risk factor, containers fall off of cargo ships in rough seas surprisingly frequently, and voyages often get delayed by a few days due to weather. Water damage due to holes in the shipping containers is also very common. And delays at the port and rail hubs due to congestion. These factors are all much bigger risks to Wal-Mart (or any major importer) than piracy is.

It's kinda like worrying about carjackings when an accidental collision is probably thousands of times more likely to kill you.

Ie, they're benefitting from their government's duty to protect their safety (which I think is pretty hard to dispute). Recovering the ship, if it happens, is purely incidental.

In some regions, specific countries or groups of countries have taken it upon themselves to fight piracy in the area. For example in the Somali region, protection and rescue generally comes from a U.S.-led coalition, regardless of the nationality of the ship/ownership/crew: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combined_Task_Force_151