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Don’t bail out the cruise industry

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Re: Don’t bail out the cruise industry

#71

Post by yellowapple »

mynameishere wrote: post #37

Man, I hate how people have all kinds of "reasons" why industry X shouldn't be bailed out. Uh, no. Nobody should be bailed out, as a general principle.

I'd say actual people should by all means be bailed out. Anything less just punishes poor people for being poor. I'd be willing to extend that to small businesses, too, for similar reasons.

Multi-million (let alone billion) dollar corporations, however, are not in a comparable situation, and re: them I fully agree with your take. If they accept bailouts, they should be prepared to also accept "We the People" democratically controlling them as publicly-owned cooperatives; the moment you depend on taxpayer money for your existence is the moment you forfeit the "right" to anything but taxpayer ownership.

Re: Don’t bail out the cruise industry

#72

Post by joshvm »

lmm wrote: post #54
edejong wrote: post #14

The cruise industry is one of the most polluting and damaging industries in the world. It ruins cities worldwide. Their ships are petri-dishes for disease, spreading it directly into our vital cities. They are blocking perfect vistas of the sea. They are ruining local sea life and are spreading non-native species. Their exhaust fumes are extremely detrimental to local air quality in cities. The swarms of tourists are…

> They are blocking perfect vistas of the sea. Counterpoint: they absorb a lot of tourist demand for visiting particular places, while taking up a minimum of space. Building the equivalent hotel capacity in the same places would be far more intrusive.

No, it's the opposite. Places which are already at capacity (like Venice, Mallorca, Santorini, etc) then receive multiple cruise ships a day which dump thousands more people into the system.

There are cruises which are "just looking" but the ones which visit heavily touristic areas tend to stop and let passengers off. Also these ships are enormous, loud and polluting. I think most locals would prefer hotels which at least contribute to the economy.

Re: Don’t bail out the cruise industry

#73

Post by usrusr »

netrus wrote: post #27
Reason077 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Airlines also pollute and dodge taxes. But love them or hate them, it's hard to argue that airlines don't play a critical role. The broader economy would suffer badly if they were to fail. Cruise ships, however, do not. They are purely recreational and the economy would not fall apart if they were to go. They also share some of the blame for spreading Covid-19 in the first place!

> The broader economy would suffer badly if they were to fail Why? The planes are not going anywhere. If airlines fail, someone will be able to buy them at a discount. They will need to hire pilots and cabin crews. Shareholders in airlines will be hit - as it should be.

That's even more true with cruise ships. That industry will be effectively bailed out one way or the other, the other is banks eating the losses after bankruptcy and new companies starting out with lower debt after taking over the assets at firesale prices.

But that only strengthens the point of the article: the optics of an actual bailout would be so much worse and the outcome would only really differ for shareholders.

Re: Don’t bail out the cruise industry

#74

Post by iguy »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #45
Reason077 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Airlines also pollute and dodge taxes. But love them or hate them, it's hard to argue that airlines don't play a critical role. The broader economy would suffer badly if they were to fail. Cruise ships, however, do not. They are purely recreational and the economy would not fall apart if they were to go. They also share some of the blame for spreading Covid-19 in the first place!

At least you could argue [citation needed] that the airlines play a bigger role in the US economy than cruise ships. I mean their intent is to ferry people (and their money) away from the US, both in the fare (which goes to tax havens and rich people's pockets) and the money people spend in foreign tourist areas.

The airline equivalent of the cruise lines would be large foreign carriers, which happen to fly to the US. It would be obvious madness for the US Govt. to give anything at all to Emirates or Ethiopian, for instance.

Whereas Delta & friends have a large footprint in the US, lots of jobs, lots of purely US service. Still not obvious whether they deserve help, but they are clearly very different organizations.

Re: Don’t bail out the cruise industry

#75

Post by usrusr »

ced wrote: post #60
Reason077 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Airlines also pollute and dodge taxes. But love them or hate them, it's hard to argue that airlines don't play a critical role. The broader economy would suffer badly if they were to fail. Cruise ships, however, do not. They are purely recreational and the economy would not fall apart if they were to go. They also share some of the blame for spreading Covid-19 in the first place!

it's hard to argue that airlines don't play a critical role. What critical industry will suffer if air travel suddenly becomes much more rare?

Cruises!

(I'm only pretending to have missed the "critical" before "industry", of course you are completely right)

Re: Don’t bail out the cruise industry

#76

Post by chrisweekly »

cltsang wrote: post #57
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're likely not going to go bust though; they have a fuckton of money, at worst the ships are going to be docked for a while until this blows over. They won't make money, but they're not going to go bust. I think this is a major problem with a lot of businesses; they consider time not spent earning money as loss, instead of just a period with less income. And I think it's the responsibility of ALL businesses to ke…

The top has absolute power over the workers. This is the result of greed and extreme capitalism. The reason to justify employers/share holders getting paid so much more than workers should be that they take so much more and higher risks. Now we have it backwards. When business is profitable the top takes all the bonus and dividends. During downtime however, workers get to swallow all the loss.

AKA "Capitalism on the way up, Socialism on the way down".

Re: Don’t bail out the cruise industry

#77

Post by rsynnott »

sytelus wrote: post #46
busterarm wrote: post #6

The cruise ships send millions of dollars of US tourists' money every year to countries in the US sphere of influence that they would otherwise never fly and visit. It's not a bailout for the cruise industry. It's a bailout for nearly every island nation in this hemisphere. We keep the tourism money flowing and they'll keep flowing exported raw materials and food.

The article is also missing the point that the majority of cruise ship consumers are from the US. A lot of these folks live for going on a cruise. I've met people who have been on cruise every single year since over a decade and the people who work hard to save money to go on cruise. It's easy to say all these other people shouldn't need X when you don't need X. My only objection against cruise company is massive pol…

> I've met people who have been on cruise every single year since over a decade and the people who work hard to save money to go on cruise

I mean, so what? If there's so much demand, presumably new cruise lines will show up at some point when the current ones collapse. In general, "[a small minority of] people like it" is not a sufficient reason to bail something out; government bailouts are inherently limited and should be targeted at where they will do the most good. Realistically, where they will do the most good, by _any_ metric, is not cruise lines.

Re: Don’t bail out the cruise industry

#78

Post by echelon »

I had a thought earlier today that might fix the economic situation, but it's extremely bold.

If the world congregates and places blame on the CCP for asking us to keep our borders open while knowing all along how contagious and deadly this virus was, that's criminally negligent. Maybe even malicious.

The behavior of the CCP after the virus spread internationally is equally alarming. They threatened to shut off access to medicines manufactured in China, placed blame on Italy and the US for the virus' origin, and shut down European and US travel to China.

Defaulting on debt is bad. But what if every nation collectively "cancelled" their debt to China? China would protest, but given the circumstance it doesn't seem like a credit downgrade would be necessary if this were taken as repayment for damages caused.

If we owe zero to China, we can then lend all of that money to businesses and individuals impacted. Pay off domestic debts.

I really like the idea of "cancelling Chinese debt". Now someone please tell me how this couldn't work. Would they retaliate? Would they consider it an act of war?

(I shouldn't have to say this, but I harbor no ill will towards the Chinese people. I love Chinese culture and studied Mandarin in college. I dislike the CCP and their actions.)

Re: Don’t bail out the cruise industry

#80

Post by numpad0 »

Bnshsysjab wrote: post #32
edejong wrote: post #14

The cruise industry is one of the most polluting and damaging industries in the world. It ruins cities worldwide. Their ships are petri-dishes for disease, spreading it directly into our vital cities. They are blocking perfect vistas of the sea. They are ruining local sea life and are spreading non-native species. Their exhaust fumes are extremely detrimental to local air quality in cities. The swarms of tourists are…

I’ve always been curious about that, why do cruise ships always get hit with gastro? I rarely hear about it but when I do it’s on a cruise ship.

I’ve heard it’s the rugs repelling sanitizers. HVAC don’t look great as well and feels a bit like overall hygiene standards is as good as they were in their heyday.
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