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Comment by kolleykibber | Hacker News Reader

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.

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> 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.

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.

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.

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.

>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.

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?

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