but wouldn't little Muhammad going off to sea and not coming back have more of an effect on the rest?
No. As abhorrent as I find piracy, what's going on in Somalia is no better. It's a complete collapse of order.

If little Muhammed doesn't go off to sea, he doesn't have much of a life expectancy anyway. When the ransoms from piracy are a considerable chunk of the GDP of the country, there's not much on land to live for.

It's a rats nest that needs to be cleaned out, has needed some cleaning for a long time, but until the piracy started no one gave a damn.