Large yacht passes by gargantuan yacht

[dontpanicbobby]

Large yacht passes by gargantuan yacht

It was a good joke, and excellently explained.

I needed the explainer @redesigned

[dontpanicbobby]

I think Usmanov saw the movie “2012” and said FTS: I’ll get my own boat.

[Mike.71]

Fincantieri | Ferry

Fincantieri | Cruise Ships

They could make public transportation ferries and cruise ships, that are technically “public transportation” too.

[gracchus]

@kogunkogun

The difference I see is a filthy rich person wasting their money on a yacht but employing thousands of people to get it built, and a filthy rich government spending a fraction of my tax dollars on socially useful things and a lion’s share on war machines and bridges to nowhere. I prefer the former; others prefer the latter.

That wasn’t the difference you discussed above. But shoehorning in military spending and bridges to nowhere into your argument after the fact only emphasises that “job creation” isn’t really the key issue here (a marine welder can work on building an aircraft carrier or a yacht, or a municipal ferry).

Putting that aside on your prompting, then, we come back to how much public good is realised from the spending. While most people here, myself included, would like to see far less government spending on the military and fewer boondoggles (including those perpetrated by members of the so-called party of fiscal responsibility like Ted Stevens), we’ll acknowledge that a lot government spending still reflects a genuine public good. We have a vote on those things, so the people applying the funds have limited accountability to us. The same things can’t be said of billionaires spending excess money (that might otherwise go to taxes) on mega-yachts they use for only a few weeks each year.

So, again, if you prefer those dollars being spent on a project that offers zero chance of public benefit vs. one that offers more than a zero chance of public benefit, and if you prefer having no accountability on spending, I don’t know what to tell you.

[Carbonman]

@kogunkogun

When I see these things, I think of all the people employed to build it and the sizable crews hired to maintain it. It is just another big vessel built with money paid to a lot of regular people that are raising families and doing normal things. While it doesn’t have a great purpose like some piece of infrastructure, its cost, compared to many more economically important things, is a mere fraction of the money spent on more socially acceptable and useful things.

The cost of this yacht applied to a highway in my state would build a couple dozen miles of highway with a bridge, and a few interchanges. I have no great faith in humanities ability to wisely spend money whether it is concentrated in a government or concentrated among the wealthy. Either way, it is powerful people deciding to do things that turn out to be wise and foolish with money.

While I am sure this yacht has a substantial set of weapons for defending itself, it will not start a war; its armament does not compare to what a government will do to equip a ship with weapons. I am not loosing sleep on how stupid rich people spend their money. I do lose sleep on how governments spend theirs.

This oligarch spends his money subverting countries his buddies want to disrupt or subsume so that he can amass more wealth. His accumulation of wealth no doubt stole money from thousands of unfortunate individuals in his home country and elsewhere.
He doesn’t need guns to protect himself and his possessions; he has the Russian military to call on, and any potential attacker knows this.