Black Market Cruises?
August 15th, 2011
Believe it or not, it wouldn’t be too big of a stretch on the imagination to have them, thanks to an over 120 year old law that regulates where ships can travel.
The law, called the Passenger Vessel Services Act of 1866, explicitly bans foreign passenger ships from taking US passengers in between US ports without stopping first at a foreign port-of-call. That means if you want to take people by sea from LA to San Francisco, you’ve got to stop either in Mexico or Peru to make it legal. What sense does that make, especially since many of the major cruise lines, like Norweigan Cruise Lines or Carnival, are foreign by US law?
As a result of this ridiculous regulation, the price of cruises remains artificially high due to the waste of fuel. So what is the answer? Perhaps the answer is in black market cruises that take people from one American city to another, at least until this antiquated law is removed from the books. Then, competition for the smaller, quick transport boats would lower the prices and spawn a new age of sea travel.
Heck, if enough people travel over water, cars might be off the road quicker, and isn’t that what Washington has been trying to do recently anyway?
