"Cruises were priced similarly to assisted living centers and more efficacious"
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
"The Cruise Lines International Association says its "crew members are provided wages that are competitive with international pay scales." But a cleaner aboard a Royal Caribbean ship, for example, will work 12 hours a day, seven days a week, for as little as $156.25 a week with no tips. U.S. labor laws are not applicable to provide protection to crew members at sea, nor is there any real oversight of the cruise lines' operations."
I bet that nice piece of fruit you are eating was picked by someone from a poor country who is likely working illegally because the money at that farm is pretty good where they came from. Yes it might seem exploitative to us but their own country is much worse. Something we might not be willing to do for any money other people are happy to do it for any wage.
> Something we might not be willing to do for any money other people are happy to do it for any wage.
Define "happy". Happy to do it rather than starve, or happy to do it rather than live in the abundance a fair share of the global output would entitle them to (for almost any definition of "fair share" - other than "handed down by previous and current war profiteers").
> ... it seems like slavery ... Some cruise lines are much nicer to their employees than others
Right. And I'm sure if it was slavery, some slave masters would be nicer to their slaves than others.
(I think I'm coming off more harshly against coldcode than I really intend to here.
I am trying to make the point that precisely because we live in a world that is unfair, defending unfairness when it is obvious will not help improve things. That is, assuming we would like to see things become more fair.
I do agree that too many people will react to obvious unfairness, and then ignore all the not so obvious wrongs we tend to contribute to everyday -- and which is almost impossible to simply "opt out" of (eg: trying to do good by recycling electronics, only to find that circuit boards are melted over open flames by children in China, destroying lives and ground water tables)).
Playing Devil's advocate: it wasn't the cruise companies who created the unfairness; they are just performing arbitrage. Eliminating it won't eliminate the unfairness; in fact, it might make it worse.
If you force them to pay a decent wage, then the workers from developing countries will lose their competitive advantage, losing the jobs to local workers. This means the money remains concentrated in developed countries, instead of raising the wages in developing countries (as it's been happening in e.g. China).
Regardless, demand for cruises is not extremely elastic. Make them more expensive and there will be fewer of them as people make alternative vacation plans. Thus fewer opportunities for poor workers. Not to mention, those workers' competitive advantage is their willingness to work for the lower rates. Take that away, and the lines will start hiring closer to home.
Then there are such questions as where did they get the ships built? At what rates? What type of paint is used? Where does the metal come from?
But even saying that some cruise liner magically appeared from some virgin source of capital - it is somewhat disingenuous to imply that choosing to employ people at what could be considered slave wages is anything but exploitation? It might be called arbitrage if the differences in wages where slight -- but they're not, are they?
I'm sure they got the money from obscenely well paid bankers. What's your point?
But even saying that some cruise liner magically appeared from some virgin source of capital - it is somewhat disingenuous to imply that choosing to employ people at what could be considered slave wages is anything but exploitation? It might be called arbitrage if the differences in wages where slight -- but they're not, are they?
Being arbitrage doesn't prevent it from being exploitative. Bu my point is that this aesthetic approach to public policy is terrible, because it tries to treat the ugly symptom, while making the underlying problem worse.
Yes, they are making a lot of money by exploiting the wage difference. But prohibiting that doesn't solve the problem, which is that some people are poor enough to accept such low wages. If you forbid it, the poor will remain poor just as well.
Now if you take the capitalist approach, the system is working: by performing the arbitrage, the poor people will have employment, more money to spend, etc (e.g. wage rises in China).
If you take, say, a marxist approach, the problem is the core of the system, and small adjustments won't solve it; you need a revolution which will bring real change.
In any case, my point is that these patches are trying to solve the wrong problem, and are not only ineffective but actively harmful to those who we're trying to help.
When, at any point in human history, has the world ever approached anything resembling "fair". The reduction in poverty and increase in quality of life in western countries has all come at the exploitation and subjegation of people in poorer countries. Certainly we've shifted the massive inequality from local to global, but just because you don't see it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
Put another way, until we find some infinite, inexpensive source of energy and material resources, no one will live in relative comfort without many more being exploited. That is the way of the world
However, in our current state, we're seeing the repercussions of this type of shift in western countries: vast unemployment. To me this means we just have way too many people alive now. Clearly that isn't a quickly solvable problem (unless you are a genocidal maniac or something...), and so greatly reducing the birthing rates over coming generations (which hasn't really even been approached yet) is the only solution.
A much smaller global population, with largely technologically optimized labor, is the only solution that really would allow most of that population to live comfortable lives in relative luxury.
So you can see how I would view any argument about what needs to be done in the short term as moot, as in my mind it would just be a waste of effort
If we can overcome resource and energy scarcity, I don't see why we couldn't support an arbitrarily large population comfortably. Unemployment is not a reason to downsize the population, it just means we're outgrowing or current economic system.
The bigger problem from my POV is that the old folks they serve are being treated as "steady state", when in fact their conditions are often deteriorating. And, when Grandma dies, will her family have to wait 1-2 weeks for her ship to return to port for a proper family gathering & funeral? Stinky...
So if you're floating around with 4690+ people, naïvely, about 39 people should die on it every year, or one every 9.28 days.
On a 10-day cruise of that size, somebody is going to die. I bet once you control for the unusually high average age of the passengers and maybe other factors (how many drunken idiots fall over the side and drown every year?), 3 people in 10 days would be pretty normal.
[1]https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/...
I wouldn't mind it either if the internet was better...
I imagine such a life would be much more interesting than life stuck in a single place with no new faces.
Given that multi-industry business model, how long do you think it would take until cruise ships join that business model? If the residents are not kicked out off the ship until they're utterly destitute, that cruise ship operator is leaving money on the table.
Its like arguing about how a hospital room costs more than a motel 6 room. Well, duh, you're not going to squeeze blood from a rock at a motel.
What sucks about this for everyone, aside from the injustice of it all, jackals at a corpse, etc, is that the new business model is completely incompatible with the old business model. When my wife and I got married, long ago, we went on a fun honeymoon cruise. This option will be removed with the new business model. Technically perhaps possible as newlyweds, but the terms will be something weird like 10% of your remaining net worth per week or whatever instead of just a fixed price "competitive with all inclusive resorts"
My grandmother's stay at a retirement/assisted living home added years to her life. She also got to meet new people and most important, had an active life. Far better than people bound up in their home alone till they pass.
The sad thing though is that this paper is from 2004. I wonder what action, if any, has been taken since.
As a side note, I also know that some people have family members that need medical care. I just hope I'm never put in a difficult situation where I would consider putting my parents in a retirement home. But if it was a cruise! Not so bad! That's like a permanent vacation!
A senior who can get by living on a cruise ship is probably also healthy enough to get by living on their own. I think it really only works in cases where the person is healthy and mentally all there, but needs someone to cook, do laundry for them, etc.
There was a doctor and two nurses on duty at the time. The doctor had to be quite resourceful: he checked my vitals, took, developed, and interpreted the x-ray, and then set the broken bone. I gather the doctor(s) onboard also wind up serving as the primary care physician for all of the staff on board, too.
The facilities themselves were quite sparse, and with somewhat dated but still functional equipment. The x-ray used film, after all. He also wound up using a spoon from the dining room as a splint, because the ship didn't seem to stock small splints.
My understanding is that shipboard medicine has advanced considerably since then. Some cursory Googling suggested that ships are routinely equipped with satellite connections to doctors on shore, ecgs, defibrillators, and the like.
In other cases passengers have been airlifted either to shore, or in one case a navy aircraft carrier, which is equipped to do surgery. That implies that reasonably advanced medical care is available ona ship, even if cruise ships are not setup to offer it. I'd link to the article, but I'm on a tablet and it's easy to find.
Although there are some ships doing cosmetic surgery at sea, and there are proposals for cruise ship medical tourism.
Also, I would not call that surgery.
I'd argue that Comfort and Mercy could do more good for US national security at sea, combined with LPD/LPH for cargo transport and personnel, than any other surface ships in the US fleet -- humanitarian missions probably improve security more than anything but the submarine nuclear deterrent.
Heck, I could see a modest startup taking on handling the logistics of such an arrangement.