[lbo-talk] cruise "blog"

[Miles Jackson]

Wojtek Sokolowski wrote:
> Doug:
>
> Reports from Alaska:
>
> <http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070813/henwood>
>
>
> [WS:] Hey, Doug, I like your line about God and dollar being intimate
> friends since the Puritans set their foot on this side of the pond, but then
> you strike a decidedly puritanical tone yourself when you talk about
> "exploited" Indonesian workers on the ship.  Emigrant laborers are the lucky
> ones, not the exploited ones - they leave voluntarily and quite eagerly to
> earn better wages than they would have at home.  
>
> What is wrong with that?  Nobody would be bitching if these were, say, IT
> workers coming to Silicon Valley or Boston, but suddenly it becomes a
> problem when these are service workers on a cruise ship.  It smells like the
> puritanical hatred of pleasure and luxury masked as a critique of global
> capitalism.  
>
> Wojtek
>
>
>   
Did you miss the part about not seeing your kids for 11 months at a 
time?  Like Doug, that would be agonizing for me, and that disruption of 
family life for the staff is exactly what the "pleasure and luxury" of a 
cruise requires.  The staff members are disposable commodities, as 
workers must be in capitalist economies.  (And yes, apply the same 
argument to people in the U. S. who must take jobs that separate them 
from their families for long periods of time.)

Miles

Miles