Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

Hartastic t1_j6oc26h wrote

> Skirting responsibility: the book said most ships fly under flags of convenience and use concessionaires for their goods and services. An American cruise liner can then avoid the more stringent safety and labor law requirements of the states by sailing under the flag of a more lax nation.

This misses a bunch of the nuance. American maritime law is protectionist to a somewhat self-defeating degree. That is to say, probably cruise ships that operate in America probably wouldn't prefer to operate under an American flag, but that's irrelevant because they also literally can't.

Among other things, to be an American cruise ship the ship would also have to be built in America, and America currently does not have the industry to build a modern cruise ship. Basically, our shipbuilding is heavily specialized into ships that kill people. There is currently one cruise ship that is America flagged (Norwegian Cruise Line's Pride of America) which was basically built in Europe, like 1% assembled in America, and required a specific act of Congress to be considered American enough to do it.

Why you would even want to have a ship be American is a separate rabbit hole of American maritime law.

I will say, if you aren't too afraid to get on an airplane... you are much more crammed into a small space with lots of people even being in an airport than you will ever be on a ship.

2

SawkyScribe OP t1_j6oqebt wrote

So I did some more reading and yeah you're right, I do find it strange that these laws were made in the 1830s though.

While it is a necessity to fly under a flag of convenience, it is interesting to note one of the things they would have to do if they were registered in the US

>The cruise ship must be staffed by U.S. crewmembers and paid based on U.S. minimum wage laws.

Again, it may not be the intended purpose, but getting to hire cleaning staff and not have to pay them American mimimum wage seems awfully convenient...

As for planes, it's an efficient mode of transport for me, not a luxury. At worst I'm there for 12 hrs? At no point am I being sold the fantasy of an air resort or expected to mix and mingle with the hundreds of people on the flight.

1

Hartastic t1_j6osk6v wrote

> Again, it may not be the intended purpose, but getting to hire cleaning staff and not have to pay them American mimimum wage seems awfully convenient...

It absolutely is. In a sense it's a lot like migrant farm workers who come from Mexico to the US to pick our fruit. That's simultaneously a job that no American is willing to do for the wage it pays, and a job that is good enough / pays well enough to make sacrifices to travel and do for many Mexicans.

You talk to people who work on ships, and the story you get a lot is that, yeah, they work long hours and they're away from their families a lot of the year... but what they're paid, while by our standards really low, is also a lot more money they can make at home with the skills they have. For a lot of crew this is a sacrifice they choose to make so their kids can have better lives than they did when they were kids. I like to think I'd be willing to do the same in their situation.

You also will, for example, meet crew who are gay and from countries where it's dangerous to be gay or something similar and this is their way to be able to, essentially, escape and get to be who they are.

> As for planes, it's an efficient mode of transport for me, not a luxury. At worst I'm there for 12 hrs? At no point am I being sold the fantasy of an air resort or expected to mix and mingle with the hundreds of people on the flight.

Ok, then let me try: whatever you're picturing for crowding is probably not accurate on a modern ship. The biggest ships in the world will have thousands of passengers but also are, essentially, small floating cities.

2