Goes into the details of kidnapping as a business venture from the kidnappers perspective, and how a price equilibrium is found between 'buyers' (ransom payers) and 'sellers' (kidnappers).
On interesting story was when the partner of a small business owner got kidnapped as punishment for failing to pay some protection money. When the business owner went to negotiate the ransom, the kidnappers had had an accountant already go through the businesses fiances so they knew exactly how much they could ask for, without it bankrupting the business owner (so that the owners company could keep thriving and thus could keep paying protection money).
What? I read the book "Never Split the Difference" written by a former FBI hostage negotiator, and it had stories of him helping with some kidnapping cases and offering a ransom. If I remember correctly his goal was not to avoid paying a ransom, but to make it as small as possible.
Good book by the way.
but this wouldn't be true of governments, compared to private citizens, since government spending is a matter of public record.
But the problem is that those that don't pay hurt even more.
The US makes it illegal to pay kidnapper ransom and, as a result, US citizens have much worse outcomes (often murdered) when they are ransomed abroad.
The theory that it makes US citizens less attractive targets is confounded by the fact that some families/friends of the victims can and do pay anyway (illegally).
Planet money did a podcast on it.
https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/09/01/548032302/epis...