Then again, in order to get money for bounties you need to powertrade/powermine. Powermining/powertrading makes more profit for pirates, therefore more pirates.
Discovery works in endless circles.
Bounties is broken, I'm afraid. Namechange cards, easy rep resets, makes it impossible to track someone.
And as for lawfuls, most of my pirating adventures has ended with lolcaps and crazy numbers of backups :/