Debauched Hubris Defined - Royal Caribbean's Oasis Of The Seas

Royal Caribbean's announcement of the Oasis of the Seas is similar in concept to our posts on the popularity of the Hamptons well before this crisis developed. The traffic jams in the Hamptons were reminiscent of similar hubris experienced before the collapse of 1929. A life of extreme leisure and excessive "play time" for pushing around paper on Wall Street is surely a sign of imminent collapse. We were right. And, Wall Street still is far from out of this crisis. The timeless reality as defined by the Four Noble Truths is that life means suffering. And suffering is caused by attachment. And nothing could define this more accurately than the attachment of extreme leisure. That we had achieved some new level of prosperity. Especially while doing nothing productive to achieve it.

The Oasis of the Seas is the world's largest cruise ship. Royal Caribbean is taking delivery of this and a sister ship at the very peak of the largest financial bubble in history. History will not look kindly on Royal Caribbean's tremendous failure in management.

The amount of new cruise ship capacity which has come on line in recent years and is expected to come on line in future years bears no resemblance to sustainability. This is the cruise industry's equivalent of Airbus's A380 mega passenger airplane announced at the height of hubris as the technology bubble was popping. The A380 is also likely to become an enormous bust with a long term, if not permanent shift in globalization dynamics. Traffic counts will never develop to sustain the A380. Airbus would be headed for eventual bankruptcy were they not heavily subsidized by the European Union. That still might happen. And I fully expect Royal Caribbean could easily end up there as well.