[simonh]

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.

[lkramer]

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.

[barry-cotter]

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.

[nerdponx]

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

[simonh]

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.

[cloverich]

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.

[simonh]

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.

[cloverich]

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".