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Don’t bail out the cruise industry

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Re: Don’t bail out the cruise industry

#201
post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean kill efficient businesses on a random basis? I don't see how that benefits anybody. To be clear I don't care about cruise lines particularly, but I'm not sure I agree with the general point that businesses hit by freak events should in general just be allowed to die.

I think the counter point was that if they are actually efficient businesses, then they will return more or less the same, as soon as there is economic capacity for them. I think an argument that it would actually be cheaper for the economy to mandate that taxpayers keep them afloat is interesting, but would argue the burden of proof should be on that side.

It's a tricky issue. In general I'm a free markets believer, tending towards the view that markets need to be regulated to be efficient and effective, but the problem we have here is not to do with market forces. It's to do with markets temporarily ceasing to exist.

On burden of proof, there's not going to be any relevant historical metrics for effectively a unique event. Politicians are simply going to need to make their best estimate of what services and capabilities are strategic and which aren't. If we only intervene where there is solid prior evidence for capabilities being needed to be preserved after a global pandemic in the modern era, we're just going to let everything burn. I don't think it's clear to me that is in the public interest.

Re: Don’t bail out the cruise industry

#202
post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So like Amazon? Have they never paid taxes? Because that quote seems to be referring to a single year?

They pay a ton income tax and sales tax.

What do they pay sales tax on that makes any material difference? And what's their income tax as a percentage of revenue?

Re: Don’t bail out the cruise industry

#203
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These days it’s basically impossible to “ethically” eat anything , unless you have your own patch of land and can be bothered to grow vegetables.

It beats doing nothing. Vegetables are harder to avoid eating at all, but fish? You can totally do without eating any ever again and be fine. And almost all salt you can buy in stores has iode added so you won’t miss that nutrient.

There's no known dietary replacement for some essential nutrients that come from eating fish. Even fish oil pills aren't as effective.

Re: Don’t bail out the cruise industry

#204
post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the counter point was that if they are actually efficient businesses, then they will return more or less the same, as soon as there is economic capacity for them. I think an argument that it would actually be cheaper for the economy to mandate that taxpayers keep them afloat is interesting, but would argue the burden of proof should be on that side.

It's a tricky issue. In general I'm a free markets believer, tending towards the view that markets need to be regulated to be efficient and effective, but the problem we have here is not to do with market forces. It's to do with markets temporarily ceasing to exist. On burden of proof, there's not going to be any relevant historical metrics for effectively a unique event. Politicians are simply going to need to make…

Sure. By burden of proof I mean just for he sake of argument. Politicians should do what they think is best. So, for the sake of argument, I think there is a wide gap between "Do not prop up the cruise industry" and "let everything burn".

Re: Don’t bail out the cruise industry

#205
post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It beats doing nothing. Vegetables are harder to avoid eating at all, but fish? You can totally do without eating any ever again and be fine. And almost all salt you can buy in stores has iode added so you won’t miss that nutrient.

There's no known dietary replacement for some essential nutrients that come from eating fish. Even fish oil pills aren't as effective.

Fish oil pills don’t solve the issue anyway, they’re made out of fish.

Be that as it may, by not eating fish you’re also not absorbing as much heavy metals which fish is rather rich in these days.

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