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Comment by edejong | Hacker News Reader

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 detrimental to local hotels and restaurants, since the swarms only buy souvenirs but lack incentive to spend big money on dining.

And all of that without paying taxes.

Let them go bust. Almost nobody is missing them.

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You also forget to mention the magic pipes that let ships dump water polluted with oil directly into the sea so they don’t have to pay at ports for proper disposal.

Outlaw ocean is an eye opening book (and a great read) about how lawless the sea is, how slavery is still very very real out there, and how it’s virtually impossible to keep eating fish once you know what’s going on (both in terms of human trafficking and in terms of quotas violation/fishing in U.N. “protected” natural reserves)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_pipe

https://www.theoutlawocean.com/

I have a friend who used to be a purser for one of the big cruise lines. They had a leak which ruined a huge amount of carpet in a dining room. They carried spare carpet on board and replaced it... and then dumped the old carpet off the side of the ship.

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.

Only if eating ethically is defined binary, not on a gradient.

A huge portion of harm can be reduced/prevented with only a little effort. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good.

> "Don't let perfect be the enemy of good. "

Battle cry of the conservative party lately. This quote has its place but not in the context of this conversation.

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.

Not entirely true. Buy produce from your local organic farmer at the farmers market and you'll probably be fine ethically.

I find it strange that ships mix water runoff, antifreeze, hydraulic oil, engine oil seepage etc etc into a huge big mixed bilge tank and then try to separate it with an oil separator.

Strange.

It's more like the bilge is a central place where any fluid that leaks out of whatever system normally handles it winds up. On small vessels you just have a straight bilge pump that dumps out the side. At cruise ship scale you can afford to stick an oil/water separator filter on it.

Yes I can understand how it could end up like that, it’s just that I think there must be a better way by now.

Just to quantify your first sentence, one single cruise ship emits the same amount of pollution as 1 million cars [0]. And, one cruise line emits more pollution every year than ALL the cars in Europe [1]. They should not just be allowed to go bust; they should be forced out of business.

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[0]: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/as-it-happens-wednesday...

[1]: https://www.transportenvironment.org/press/luxury-cruise-gia...

This is often quoted and misleading. It doesn’t emit a million times more pollution than a car across the board, it emits a million times more sulphur oxide than a car.

Now sulphur oxide is nasty stuff, and regulated out of vehicle emissions for good reason. Fuel conditioning and catalytic convertors take care of this. But those things add cost, and why would a cruise ship company do it if they are not compelled legally and their customers don’t mind?

I don’t feel bad for giving my friends who go on cruises a hard time over this. Most will say they simply do not care about the environment. They are not immediately threatening their own immediate habitat. These are the people who go on cruises. The fact that the cruise industry exists is a sad mark on humanity.

https://www.abctourism.org/cruise-ship-pollution

Not only sulphur oxides, particulates as well (see my first quoted link). Particulate matter from combustion is extremely nasty. These floating petri dishes choke everything in their path.

> But those things add cost, and why would a cruise ship company do it if they are not compelled legally and their customers don’t mind?

Because their owners give a shit about the world they're leaving to their children?

Oh, well, I suppose they don't, then, do they?

To list a few positives.

Europe maybe not, but places like Honduras would be worse off without them.

The industry and shipyards are advancing technology in ways that other industries do not. New ships use LNG, batteries and renewables. A carbon neutral cruise ship is not too far away.

The intensive childcare offered allows parents who cannot otherwise get such services to relax.

Pixar's Wall-e was prescient in that most people would choose to live this way.

The demand for cruises is not going to go away.

> The demand for cruises is not going to go away.

In that case why the need for a bailout? If they are viable businesses either as is or after reorganization in bankruptcy, then what’s the issue that needs solving by the government? That the very rich owners and lenders lost money and wish they hadn’t?

You could say the same thing about airlines, but no one is arguing about whether airlines are a necessary component of the economy.

I don't support a bailout for cruise lines, but I also don't support a bailout for airlines or any industry.

This pandemic crisis is being exploited on all fronts, and the first thing that everyone is going for is money. There is a lot of FUD being spread around as cause to bailout special interests, and that's a short term solution for a long term problem. It will only make things worse and more difficult in the end to correct the current problems at hand.

The focus shouldn't be on where to be spending money right now. The focus should be on developing proper procedures that at best prevents the next pandemic or at worst controls and minimizes its effect.

>You could say the same thing about airlines, but no one is arguing about whether airlines are a necessary component of the economy.

I don't understand - do you mean that airlines are not necessary components of the economy or that they are. And do you mean that cruise ships are or are not necessary components of the economy.

If airlines are necessary and cruise ships are not then it might follow that you should bail out one without bailing out the other.

Like a saying, don't bail out corporations so shareholders learn. Bail out people so they can can quickly start new businesses.

> Like a saying, don't bail out corporations so shareholders learn.

I agree with you for self-inflicted problems (such as the financial crisis, or a lack of general funds).

Requiring all corporations to hold enough cash for 6 months of runway with 0 income however? That's an extreme requirement on which most if not all companies would fail.

The current situation implies that not holding cash for 6 months and using loans for day-to-day operations was a premature optimization. Essentially corporations assumed that in the time of prolonged crises they would be bailed out by taxpayers and optimized for an extra profit for shareholders. The profit that was extracted from all taxpayers.

That’s not necessarily the case. They’d have to either have that cash on hand or be able to raise it in the debt or equity markets. If these are long term viable businesses, I don’t see why they shouldn’t be able to do just that. Doesn’t seem like any are trying because they’d rather get a government handout.

Fair weather capitalists.

> or be able to raise it in the debt or equity markets

The debt/equity markets are beyond fucked at the moment. Relying on them is what led the financial industry to the 2008 crisis and it certainly won't be a good idea to rely on them in future pandemics.

> Fair weather capitalists.

The entire point of governments in a capitalist system is to deal with stuff that is too big for companies and individual people to handle - which a pandemic certainly is.

The markets are liquid, the government is making sure of that. They might not have the pricing that companies think they deserve, but such is life.

I don't know much about this, but I assume the advances in renewables and carbon neutral ships is driven mostly by regulation aimed to reduce pollution. Can we really give the cruise companies a lot of credit for that?

> The demand for cruises is not going to go away.

Good, then there will still be cruise ships after the industry felt the consequences, and perhaps they will have learned something.

> A carbon neutral cruise ship is not too far away.

Have you got some good links? This would be amazing, but sounds extremely unlikely.

>Pixar's Wall-e. This is such a great way to describe the cruise crowds - really captures the commercialised, tacky, pseudo-luxury essence of cruises and their bovine patrons.

Then maybe Honduras should bail out them?

I think you're being a bit naive. All the ships will still exist. All that will happen is that investors will snap up the ships and 'brands' at bargain prices, set up new cruise companies and the ships will be back in business in a matter of a few months, probably with the same crews and the same company names. The only thing that will change is the ownership.

Hopefully if the shareholders loose a lot of money this way, they will demand better governance of the next company that is set up. This, at least, is how it _should_ work.

How would better governance help? This is a once in 50 years event minimum and losing all your custom for three months is enough to wipe out the accumulated profit of a decade for all but the most well capitalized businesses, with no shareholders clamoring “Where are my goddamned dividends?” It’s not like you can take insure for a risk like this either. There’s a substantial risk your insurance company and their reinsurance company will go bust.

All the more reason not to bail them out. Let the market do its thing.

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.

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".

I never got it but I also never went on a cruise ship. But, for the life of me, I can't figure out the attraction of the cruise ship. You are siting in this big hotel complex, you are not enjoying much of the scenery, cities, or anything. You are just in a hotel and they even have pools? What's the point of being in the ocean anyway if you are staying inside?

> I never got it but I also never went on a cruise ship.

Well I have been on one. A friend thought it would be a good idea to hold his 60th birthday on a cruise ship.

It is exactly as you say - a hotel, laid sideways. But unlike a hotel there no way to out, and in my case no internet worth using.

The primary ways people seemed to keep themselves occupied were drinking alcohol, eating food and watching other people in various ways. None of those thinks work for me. Exercise consisted doing the same brisk walk around and around the ship every day. There were other options, but you had to pay for them.

Reflects my thoughts exactly. Also, all the amenities are overcrowded. I've seen photos (while doing research before writing GP) and I can't imagine having to stay in such an invested place for longer than a day or two.

> 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.

How much tourism would there be contributing to the economy without those cruise ships bringing the tourists in the first place?

If you ever get the chance to visit Venice - a city which is relatively well designed for tourists (you walk in a one way loop) - they're not struggling for customers. On a hot day even in spring it's absolutely heaving and full of places to rip you off. Also plenty of places to eat reasonably, I should add.

Most tourists are not coming by cruise. They're Italians (train to Rome is cheap and takes three hours), Europeans (dirt cheap flights) and other airborne visitors. Since it's easy to get to, lots of people go to Rome and then do a day or a night in Venice.

Santorini is tiny. It's set up as a luxury island for couples (and it's beautiful, so you see why). I guess cruising there is cheaper than ferry and hotel.

Mallorca is somewhere in the middle. Relatively cheap to fly there, cheap to stay and cheap to eat. But again, not designed for a thousand person instantaneous load who thunder through, buy trinkets and leave.

Remember you get a bed, breakfast and dinner onboard so why waste money on land if you only have say six hours to visit? (unless the ship docks overnight)

Still too much

>> 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.

I'm sure the host country has a say in this...they can receive cruises or not so the "dumping" might be a different thing for them. Like tourism cash. At least they decide for themselves, not us.

You shouldn't be downvoted for high quality posts like this.

You're absolutely right that most locals would prefer hotels - the economic contributions alone answer for the externalities that the OP was concerned about.

As a local living in such a hotspot: this exactly is a concern our municipal council is trying to balance.

Cruise ships unload hordes of tourists who are then shepherded through the commercial center of town for a couple of hours. You'd think that's a good thing. It's not.

They don't go to restaurants for a full meal, they don't visit venues or do any activities. It's literally drop 'n shop. Meanwhile, they crowd the streets, not to mention the surplus of garbage. Commercial activity changes to low quality souvenir shops and fast food.

Local economy earns very little, but the costs of having them are very much for the locals.

As someone who spent a great deal of my life living and working in a tourism economy I am not shedding a single tear over cruise ships undercutting local providers of food/shelter.

With traditional brick'n'mortar tourism the people who fleece the tourists make bank. Then the people who fleece the people who fleece the tourists take their cut. The landlord, the plumber, the garbage collection company, everything including even the municipal government basically charges what the market will bear in order to get their slice of the pie.

Cruise ships piss off everyone who isn't running a tourist trap, T-shirt shop or cafe because they handle all the supporting industry so the people who normally fleece the people who fleece the tourists don't get their cut because the tourists don't have to stay in a hotel, visit a liquor store, etc, etc. in order to visit the beaches, the cafe's the shops, etc. because the cruise ship handles that.

If we take that the liquor store that tourists shop in is the same liquor store/cafe/plumber that the locals use, then aren't those several layers of "fleecing" just..the regular economic activity for the area?

I can't imagine anyone ever thinking, "gee, good thing the cruise ships dock in Barcelona, otherwise the prices at Carrefour and the supermercados would go back to being astronomical and the garbage collection services would be able to take full advantage of us again"

>If we take that the liquor store that tourists shop in is the same liquor store/cafe/plumber that the locals use,

You can't make that assumption. There are a minority of businesses that are open in the off season that are used by locals. The majority of businesses are targeted at tourists only and any use by locals is incidental and immaterial to their balance sheets. Many of the business owners actually have other locations that they'll run in the off season (e.g. florida for the winter, nantucket for the summer).

Depending on the location (i.e. less true on an island where you have to incur a $100 ferry ticket to leave) many locals spend huge amounts of time traveling in order to buy goods at reasonable prices. Ecommerce (which doesn't generally change prices by location) and big box stores (which have rules about prices that franchise owners must follow) tend to be the places locals shop for goods in where possible. The further you get from pure tourism (e.g restaurant = 0 steps, restaurant's landlord = 1 step, landlords plumber = 2 steps) the more likely a business is to be open year round.

>I can't imagine anyone ever thinking, "gee, good thing the cruise ships dock in Barcelona,

Barcelona (or Miami for that matter) is lucky that it's a big enough city with enough other industry that normal economic competition keeps prices reasonable. Pretty much any city tourism destination will have reasonable prices there's other industry going on even if tourism is the big one. The quaint little towns with nothing but tourism are what I'm talking about. Sure, the locals who make their money close to the tourists would be angry if you parked a cruise ship there but there's also be a huge number hoping that the hotels and rentals lower their prices to compete with the cruises causing the restaurants to lower their prices, etc, etc so that they can actually justify the cost of going out to eat once in awhile.

>supermercados would go back to being astronomical and the garbage collection services would be able to take full advantage of us again"

The supermarkets where my parents live (they still live in the tourist town I left) fought tooth and nail to keep the chain known for low prices from setting up shop just barely within a reasonable driving distance. Many, dare I say most locals love outside competition because they can get more for their dollar.

I could tell you similar stories about damn near every type of business up to and including a scrap metal recycler.

> 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.

Right, so if the cruises weren't there they would look to increase that "capacity" to accommodate that demand - which would likely mean building giant hotels.

> I think most locals would prefer hotels which at least contribute to the economy.

The kind of person who wants a cruise would probably favour a resort-style hotel, so it would be the same thing in terms of not eating at local restaurants, crowding into the same places, and the like. Hotels provide some employment but not particularly high quality employment (it's mostly precarious minimum wage jobs, no?), and meanwhile their existence pushes up land/building prices. Hotels might pay direct taxes, but cruise ships can be made to do the same.

In some places there's literally no space - Venice for example, land is expensive and it's such a historic city that you can't just build a skyscraper (nobody would give you permission). This is the point about them being at capacity. In summer everywhere is booked. The argument is that lack of beds stifles demand, but then you can barely walk round Venice in high season. It's not about hotel capacity, it's the capacity of the city infrastructure itself. Venice has no land for hotels, or anything else!

Resort style hotels tend to be sited elsewhere with space for pools and recreation, and people don't leave (or they do so on a couple of tour coaches a day). Though look at Oxford or Cambridge in summer to understand how busy "the odd coach" can make a city centre.

Cruise ships are also full of mostly low-paid, high-turnover jobs (often seasonal). Hotels confine people which means they then go and spend time (and money) in the city. They might go for an early breakfast, eat out, see some museums.

> In some places there's literally no space - Venice for example, land is expensive and it's such a historic city that you can't just build a skyscraper (nobody would give you permission). This is the point about them being at capacity. In summer everywhere is booked. The argument is that lack of beds stifles demand, but then you can barely walk round Venice in high season. It's not about hotel capacity, it's the capacity of the city infrastructure itself. Venice has no land for hotels, or anything else!

In an efficient market everything operates at capacity. That doesn't mean there's no ability to adjust. In the absence of the cruise ships there'd be more demand for hotels, driving up prices; land values would go up, pricing more of the locals out. Restaurants and homes would be converted into tourist accommodation. Pressure would mount to relax the building regulations - not around the unique tourist attractions, but in the backstreets where it could be argued that there wasn't such unique architectural merit. And most important of all, fewer people would get to see Venice.

That's only a net positive if you think that more tourism (which is a form of consumerism) is always a good thing.

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.

> why do cruise ships always get hit with gastro?

Everybody uses the same touch points, all day long. Most get their food from the same buffet line, touch the same food, the same drink dispensers, sit down at the same tables (which aren't cleaned often enough), sit on the same deck chairs at the pool, hold on to the same railings on the stairways (especially since the boat is moving), etc., etc.

They're all packed into the same space, making the same movements every day (room, to the stairs/elevator, to the buffet, to the stairs/elevator again, to the pool, to the stairs/elevator, etc.) Any virus that makes it to any common touch point is going to infect everybody in a matter of hours.

-Thousands of passengers from all over the world, (comparatively) cramped quarters, HVAC systems push air from cabin to cabin without sterilisation, buffets where hundreds handle the same serving utensils...

> "HVAC systems push air from cabin to cabin without sterilisation"

I suspect this is actually a bigger part of it than people realise.

I've been in very modern hotels that clearly had issues with their HVAC design as smells (bathroom smells... yuck!) from other rooms infiltrated through the ventilation ducts. I imagine this issue could be worse in a cruise ship given the small size of the cabins.

Given how often cruise ships end up spreading infections between passengers, it's odd how popular they are with the elderly. Not only are they increasing their odds of catching something, the medical facilities on the ship and many of the ports of call are inferior to what's available in most average sized cities back home.

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.

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 keep a savings account so they can weather economic downturns for a few months (at least 6), while paying their staff in full.

I mean it's only been a few months and they're already asking for handouts? Besides, whatever happened to pulling yourself up by the bootstraps and how communism and the state is evil?

I’ve looked at their finances. A few very well may go bust. It’s incredible how many publicly traded companies are living paycheck to paycheck.

I don’t like the idea of bailing out debt-laden, mismanaged companies. Let them go into bankruptcy and let a more competent group of people buy them and run them. This is doubly true for Boeing. Get those monkeys out of the executive positions.

Well I don't know why we're surprised when the federal government does what they can to make sure companies don't retain earrings. The Accumulated Earnings Tax

The ships aren't going to disappear, someone else will buy them and operate them.

Exactly. These companies will go bankrupt, but some savvy investors will snap up their assets on the cheap or bring them through bankruptcy and be back up and running on the other side.

Edit: My point being, we should let this happen. I see no reason to bail them out.

>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.

Why do people get this impression a pandemic, combined with an unprecedented economic drawdown, combined with one of the most vitriolic political climates we've ever seen is just going to "blow over", and in 6 months we'll be going along like nothing ever happened?

Covid19 might go away (or it might not, there's always that). But many things are going to change. Who's to say we don't now decide that cruise ships are a stupid idea, because they spread disease, pollute like crazy, don't pay taxes and need bailouts? Many industries disappear.

Cruise lines can borrow money at rock bottom interest rates. We do not need to bail them out. They don't even pay US taxes.

Royal Caribbean is borrowing at 6-7% according to a quick Google. And that is in good times.

No reason to believe they could attract better terms at a time like this

> 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.

It depends if you still have expenses, like e.g. rent.

Or employees.

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".

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