Bryan Caplan    The Economics and Philosophy of the Cruise Ship
Emotions and Decisions... An Envy Tax?...  I've taken cruises to
Bermuda, the Bahamas, and in the Mediterranean and Black Seas.
And of course I'm not one to just sit back and enjoy the food.
My mind soon wanders back to economics and philosophy. Tyler
Cowen's recent post on cruising has inspired me to share my
reflections.  At least on the cruises I've been on, passengers
never see cruise employees off-duty. How is that possible?
Simple: According to their terms of employment, the workers have
to return to their decks if they aren't doing their job. The
upshot is that the workers divide their time between the sunlit
upperworld where they wait on the spoiled passengers, and their
Morlockian below-the-waterline home.  Who would take such an
offer? The answer, almost invariably, is people from Third World
countries. The captains, officers, and managers come from Europe
and America, but virtually no one else. Someone from India,
Thailand, Indonesia,