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A Floating Home For Tech Start-ups
JoeMerchant writes "Max Marty, founder of Blueseed, thinks immigration laws in the U.S. make it too difficult for entrepreneurs from other countries to come to the U.S. and develop new technologies. In order to solve this, he's trying to buy a large ship he can anchor off the coast of California, in international waters, which he can then turn into a start-up incubator, fostering a 'year-long hack-a-thon.' From the article: 'With a B-1 visa, visitors can freely travel to the United States for meetings, conferences, and even training seminars. B-1 visas are relatively easy to get, and can be valid for as long as 10 years. Blueseed plans to provide regular ferry service between the ship to the United States. While Blueseed residents would need to do their actual work—such as writing code—on the ship, Marty envisions them making regular trips to Silicon Valley to meet with clients, investors, and business partners. With the ship only 12 miles offshore, it should be practical to make a day trip to the mainland and return in the evening. A B-1 visa also permits overnight stays.'"
or floating gulag.
So old in fact, and so unprofitable, that nobody has done it purely because it is not largely profitable.
It sounds like this would be an irresistible target for someone with a boat or a plane packed with explosives. Sadly, that's the type of world we live in. You would need anti-aircraft turrets and security boat patrols. Actually, that sounds kind of cool.
No wai. I'm sure the peoples of California (myself included) would not want a boat of foreigners off their coast... for what, permanently? That would not fly with environmentalists, and we have lots of them.
..the USA gives a rats ass about its jurisdictional boundaries.
Have gnu, will travel.
USA! USA! USA!
technologies
12 miles offshore
I suppose the first technology they're going to work on is how to get a constant stream of electricity out there?
I bet Mexico would love to get these guys over there, and it is just a couple minute walk over the boarder to the San Diego Trolley.
Sure brings a new meaning to the term "off-shoring."
FTA: "Some of the Silicon Valley's most important companies, including Intel, Google, and Yahoo, were cofounded by immigrants."
Intel wasn't.
"Yet America's creaky immigration system makes it difficult for talented young people born outside of the United States to come to the Bay Area"
Riiiight, that's where there aren't any young people born outside of the United States in the Bay Area. Sure.
Make it a giant lashed-together raft circulating around the Pacific rim, and we'll be happy.
I have a strong feeling this would be awfull. It would be used for everything except tech start-ups.
A wreck of cheap labor on international waters without respect of human rights or even labor laws, worker rights would most likely be squashed on daily basis.
It looks like I have more job safety then you will ever have, you freshly B-1 visas endangered IT/EE degree white collar soon to be displaced workers.
Parking 12 nautical miles away from the coast still leaves the ship in the EEZ, so the US can easily regulate it (in fact, there are probably laws already in force that would apply to this).
you can come to America and live on a floating prison. I'm not sure what sort of abject misery you'd have to be coming from to make living/working on a prison ship seem like a good idea.
I've been on boats around the bay and off the coast and I can tell you that about 30% of the time there won't be any work getting done because everyone will be hanging over the rails puking their guts out.
I love the people who seem to think international waters means "You can do whatever you want." No, not really. You can declare yourself to be your own country or whatever but that doesn't matter. There are only two real ways to be an independent country:
1) Get recognized as such by one or more major international bodies like the UN, NATO, etc. When the big boys say "Yup, you are independent," then you are. This is more or less how it goes for countries like Iceland, that have effectively no military.
2) Have enough guns that nobody can challenge your independence. That's how it works for countries like the US or China. Doesn't really matter what anyone wants to think, they are independent by virtue of nobody has the ability to invade them.
Neither of that would be the case for this little offshore platform. The US could screw them over real simply by just refusing to allow sea or air traffic to or from the platform. If there was any real problem, they could send in the Coast Guard. In the event the people on the platform fired on the USCG, well that is that as per US law that's an act of war and then the Navy can get involved.
Alternatively they could flag themselves under some nation, but then they are subject to that nations laws, and of course that nation will have treaties with the US and so on.
Gosh, Wally, what do you think they'd use those for?
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
.. this particular assumption is wrong.
I am based out of Canada at the moment and I work in a big IT company. We had our annual conference in Chicago, I applied for a B1 and was refused. The grounds were that i apparently could not prove "strong ties to my home country" . I am originally from India, and my job requires me to travel a lot. This situation ( having stayed in Canada for 6 months only ) was the criteria for them to reject my entry. And i had a perfectly valid reason to visit the US.
This is not a rant. I hope the backers of the venture understand that there are many more visa issues than what they are aware off.
Presumably, this would not be subject to any laws protecting employment, civil rights, etc.. Your employment and life would be subject to the whims of whoever runs the place. Even contracts need courts and laws to make them effective.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
.... in a prison, with a chance of drowning.
Legalities aside, that can be a pretty nasty hunk of ocean. There will be considerable periods of time when that ship will either be maneuvering to ride out a storm, or going someplace else to avoid a storm. A big share of the year it will need to underway just to provide a reasonable amount of stability.
But it would also be legal for the U.S Govt to declare that these ships are not going to be eligible for rescue and recovery by US Coast Guard, and US Navy to declare it is not their job to protect such ships from pirates. (Real ones not the software DVD pirates).
It would also be legal for people to find the customers of these ship borne companies and the products made by them and give wide publicity for them. After BofA backed down on the debit card fee, the Occupy Something or the Other people are itching to find something to occupy. It will give them something to go after.
All perfectly legal of course. But again, all this assumes US Government is going to be looking after the interests of its citizens. But in this post citizens-united world, it might decide "even ship borne floating sweat shop owning corporations are people" and protect them instead of us.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
It sounds like someone read the last half of Snow Crash and thought that this was somehow a good idea. Either that, or the Wikipedia article on L. Ron Hubbard, and figured he could get a lot of underage girls that way.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
... terrible idea. With millions of skilled workers out of a job - not to mention millions more unskilled - this kind of thing just seems like yet another blatant slap in the face of the American worker.
For another thing, the cost to build it is huge and I'm not sure who would fund it just to save a few incremental bucks on hourly labor cost. Sure the lifetime of the ship might be 20-30 years, but there's upkeep and a crew needed to run it which would likely be at least hundreds of thousands annually.
Also - how do you effectively bring bandwidth to these? VoIP-over-Satellite sounds like a terrible idea and satellite Internet is also pretty terrible. Unless they're going to pull a 12-mile-ish submarine fiber cable to it - again, adding millions to the build cost - I can't see the idea taking off.
http://developers.slashdot.org/story/05/04/20/2251203/offshoring-to-a-ship-in-international-waters
This is a very attractive idea, and people have been attracted to it a few times before!
This article isn't exactly a dup, but as Mark Twain said "History doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes"
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
... that we don't enforce the immigration laws in many ways, but for those who would truly bring wealth to the country, this sort of approach is seriously proposed.
Check your premises.
The proposed location is 12 miles off Maverick's Beach in Half Moon Bay, one of the world's great surfing spots.
Between the ship to the United States and what?
The people of California have no say over who can hang out in the International Waters off their coast. They might not like it, but without declaring war and attacking the ship, violating the Law of the Sea in the process, it doesn't matter, AT ALL what some eco-numbnuts in California think about this.
I am sorry to say have to say this but it should be tough for foreign entrepreneurs to make inroads into the United States. It should be a policy of US citizens first. Americans do not have a shortfall of talent that we need to import entrepreneurs. I have to beg to differ on this one.
Hey, dumbass. We have this thing called The Internet now. You can videoconference over it, and share text and pictures you create on your computer. Actually being in the same room with someone is less productive, overall, since you end up catching their diseases and have to spend the next week on the ship hanging over the rail. And then the pirates take all your shit and kidnap your IT department and the US Navy bills you 18 times your 5-year-plan to get them back for you.
Fucking seriously. Why are airlines still in business? Oh wait, they're dropping like flies. Clue.
Get a computer. Get a wi-fi router and a broadband modem and an ISP. Get Skype and a bluetooth headset and a $5 webcam. Then go the fuck away, stay the fuck away, and show up on time for your meetings.
I think not. Again they'd have two choices:
1) Flag under a country, as any other ship does. Do that, and you are subject to the laws of that country.
2) Don't flag. In that case any nation can board your ship, just for not being flagged. You can bet the US would do just that.
Basically if they want to set up a little fake island for fun, the US won't care, and would probably even help save them when the seas get rough. If they want to set it up to try and evade US law, that isn't going to fly.
Wonderful. We have relatively loose and liberal immigration laws, and already have tons of foreigners coming into the country to take jobs. Not just farming or service job labor, but even taking technical jobs and thus keeping wages low for Americans. Not to mention the job shortages of a weak economy. Now we have someone announcing plans to further erode what little imagined protection American workers have.
I'm sure I've offended someone who thinks that the United States just has to open its boarders to everything even though other nations protect themselves from the same problems, and thus will soon be modded down so my voice is silenced. After all, even the governor of Texas wants to charge lower tuition to illegal aliens (meaning criminals, look up illegal) than to honest tax paying Americans from other states, even though the illegals couldn't legally work in his state after getting an education! But consider that there just might be some valid reasons for a sound and balanced immigration and work visa program and don't applaud everyone who wants to circumvent it.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
I am Andrew Ryan, and I'm here to ask you a question. Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow? 'No!' says the man in Washington, 'It belongs to the poor.' 'No!' says the man in the Vatican, 'It belongs to God.' 'No!' says the man in Moscow, 'It belongs to everyone.' I rejected those answers; instead, I chose something different. I chose the impossible. I chose... Rapture, a city where the artist would not fear the censor, where the scientist would not be bound by petty morality, Where the great would not be constrained by the small! And with the sweat of your brow, Rapture can become your city as well.
http://www.blueseed.co/
Now let's see if we can flood it :-)
You can fill software positions. I guess if you're an insecure boss who only wants to hire people H1B so you can pay them less, treat them like crap, and they're almost forced to stay with the same company; then this will work out for you. Oh and software developers from India don't really want to come over to the US as much as they used to.
The problem with the American worker is that he doesn't know squat about computers and software. There's literally tons of job openings right now for tech workers, programmers, software engineers, etc.
Many people avoid software engineering in college, because of the chance of being outsourced.
There are not any anchorages in international waters (> 12 NM) of the CA coast, check the charts you morons ! You can't just anchor anywhere, a lot of open and deep water out there, no where to drop the hook unless you near shore, or one of the channel islands etc, definitely no real anchorages pass the 12 NM limit, where do people get such ideas . Land lubbers !
The US has had a "contiguous zone" extending from 12nm (nautical miles, not nanometers :-) to 24nm since 1999.
The US maintains customs, fiscal, immigration, sanitary laws and regulations out to 24nm, so a floating coding platform within that limit would be subject to not just immigration laws (so B1 visas would not be sufficient, since they do not leave US immigration jurisdiction at any point if they're only 12nm from land), but all tax and related laws as well.
We could pirate intellectual property there.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
In direct contravention of international law, the US claims sovereignty out to 100 miles from the coast. Slightly different scale of problem at that distance.
like someone really wants an excuse to pay less tax?
not as long as DHS & TSA exist.
I wish Max the best of luck with his venture, but when the best and brightest of you consider where to relocate, I think my plan to retrofit a fleet of mothballed B-52s into an airborne coding platform will win out. We'll fly in and out of Moffett Field for maintenance stops and onworld meetings. The planes will refuel in Berkeley with fair trade bio-kerosene. Unemployed Hooters Air flight staff will offer network support, Blue Bottle coffee, and reasonably priced food items.
Now, this is what we call "off-shore-ing programming work" in every sense
The highly skilled people take jobs Americans want regardless of where in the world they are located. This can't be avoided and is called outsourcing.
I live in South America, and pretty much anyone I know here on the tech industry is taking jobs from American companies.
If America lets the highly skilled people in, at least their money will be spent inside the country, and this will end up generating more jobs in the long run.
12 miles out isn't going to cut it if it looks like you are evading US immigration laws, etc.
Territorial Waters
You will have to crew, equipt, maintain, and supply the boat to more or less the same standards as a cruise ship. No matter how close to shore you are parked, this is going to cost a lot more than you think.
Your big boat is a big expense.
meh.
Take a look at the problems GA & AL are having finding agricultural workers since they've passed their new immigration bills.
I'll grant you, Americans would work construction. But I expect wages have been inflated the last 7 years due to the housing bubble. I doubt they will pay as well when they come back. Or that there will be as many as there used to be.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
The Indian guy I worked with thought this boat off the coast idea was a great until I pointed out the possibility of unemployed US defense contractors stealing a torpedo from the warehouse to resolve the problem. Forget the terrorists, displaced US workers can get pretty pissed off in the first place.
A boat load like this is not going to be filled with entrepreneurs for a start up, more likely slave labor - these people would be at the mercy of the ship owners who can charge what ever they want for food, water, and trips to shore.
So you park this thing 25 miles off the coast of CA to solve the legal issues. Is there an anchor chain that long??? or are you just going to drift about? Constantly run the engine to hold your position? I hear they have strong currents off the CA coast.
There is that entire retired Navy fleet off the coast of California. Anyone know if the Navy has ever asked for bids for people to buy/refurbish them?
AS the Companies say they want CS but the schools they want them from a the theory loaded schools that are lacking in the skills.
They don't want the tech schools even when they do teach the skills needed for the job.
Some places even say that some more tech based Majors are what we want.
http://thedailywtf.com/Comments/More-Limitin,-Wrong-Major,-and-Parallel-Universe-Replacement.aspx
There should be tech schools with apprenticeship for IT work.
oh, great, naturally they'll use obsolete rustbuckets to cut every corner imaginable. I can't possibly imagine any potential problems with that scheme.
oh, the humanity!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
And there will be absolutely no problems with staffing the ship with crew, or filling the galley, or getting rid of garbage and toilet waste, or getting fresh water, or shelter from storms, etc. It's a stupid pipedream, nothing more.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Article says "They're still researching options, but the tentative plan is for a high-speed fixed wireless connection with a satellite backup."
Software Pirates :-)
Mod me down, I shall become more off-topic than you could possibly imagine.
Cramped living quarters, rough seas, and a lack of basic amenities you'd find in even the most basic apartment complexes. Unless you're talking about something fantastically expensive like a luxury cruise liner, but people with that kind of money already live like princes in their home countries.
You mention Mavs as one of the world's great surfing spots. It is, and it requires, or should I say *demands* great surfers to match it. Several people have died there.
That said, there is plenty of easier stuff in the area. Bring a wet suit, and watch out for whitey. Pro tip: Whitey isn't a baseball player or a white supremicist.
BTW, I'm not a surfer myself but I enjoy watching it from shore. Mavs is best seen from boats just south of the break.
The navy spent years figuring out how to refuel and transfer high-value parts between two ships at sea. But they don't transfer large cargo containers, which these people would need to do in order to feed 600+ developers, staff and crew.
And then there's the garbage issue. You can't just dump garbage over the side any more. You need to package it up and bring it back to port when you return. Oh. Wait. These people can't dock the ship anywhere, because hardly anyone on board will have a visa. So they need to move a container full of trash across to the resupply ship, too.
This was a dumb idea in 2005, and it's still dumb today.
...with seven feet of red hot, curare-tipped wrought-iron fencepost. It's bad enough H1B visas are being abused like they are when the U6 is upwards of 25%.
Furries make the internet go.
Does this remind anyone else of The Raft from Snow Crash?
So he wants to make a slave ship and pick the cotton on the ship.
So Sandeep, since the USA is getting its fear and loathing on, and wouldn't really want you or your talent or your genius or your money because you're a dirty furriner, why don't you fly to Canada and I'll put you and Prakash on a boat headed south off the coast of a country that fears you and mistrusts you?
Just think of all the work you'll get done when you're near America yet completely cut off from distractions like scenery, clubs, fast cars and women and fun. Think of how close you'll be with your shipmates when you're with them day after endless, miserable day. Think of the convenience of getting all of your foods out of a can. Think of those quaint old English nautical customs everyone loves: the rum! and the buggery! and the lash! You do miss the English right? I knew you did!
What's that? You're just going to stay in Canada? Their money's actually worth something? You fucking hate Brits but Canada's not so bad? The Canadians aren't rocketing backwards into totalitarianism and ignorance and incompetence? Well mister, obviously you've never been to Toronto....
-- How I want a drink, alcoholic of course, after the heavy lectures involving quantum mechanics.
Before continuing to encourage offshoring and other incentives for Americans to get outbid by foreigners?
Look, we have torrents of people sneaking across the border from Mexico, and yet we make talented people jump through hoops to come to the USA. It's absolutely ridiculous. Despite some posturing otherwise, there's not even a consensus on the right wing that illegal immigrants should be deported - indeed, two GOP candidates are on the record for some sort of amnesty and the official libertarian GOP candidate generally doesn't give a shit about immigration at all - except when he's trying to raise money. At this point, I'm like ready to throw in the towel, embrace the future, and just let whoever wants to come to America, come to America. We have a huge fricking continent and if we run out of room, we can always cut a deal with Canada. It's just absolutely mind boggling that people cannot accept the political reality and just deal with it in the best way possible. Why not have a USA with like 20M immigrants from India? Their food is pretty good, the women are hot as hell, and they make decent engineers.
This is my sig.
Not much difference between 12nm and 24nm at that point. Except you won't be able to see land, and the stars will look better at night.
I still don't understand how this option would be better than staying in their home country and getting 'tourist' visas for a few times a year. You might need to have 'meetings' in Yosemite or something.
I get queasy just thinking of coding on a ship for an hour, let alone a few months or a years. Maybe the Caribbean or the Gulf of Mexico might work, but anywhere at sea subject to swells that have had thousands of miles to mature can't be that conducive to coding. And, if you can tolerate it, you'll make more money on an oil rig.
-Chris
If you enter on a tourist visa and do any business, you can and will be banned from entry for the next 5 years.
The real scam is that they'll be able to get Americans to sign up, and try to avoid having to give even the minimum benefits required by law ...
And after lunch, the captain wants to go water skiing, so make sure your rowlocks are greased. Back to work you code monkeys!! One LoC per drumbeat or there'll be lashings for all of you.
that way if the economy sinks, the ship sinks with it and no unemployment problems
Never antropomorphize computers, they do not like that
thank you come again.
Right, we give them HUGE grants and scholarships for being "minorities" and pay for their entire schooling all the way through graduate school and beyond and then we send them home because we're afraid they'll take jobs Americans want.
If you give them residence/citizenship and they find a job that they are qualified for based on their excellent education we paid for, they will most likely become Americans and not only that, they'll be more productive and outstanding than many "native" born Americans.
been exposed to the public internet. Find a printer you like and search a unique phrase from the interface. You'll find no less than 50 of those printers' interfaces exposed to the public internet with default passwords.
First of all, you don't just anchor a big ship 24 miles offshore in several thousand feet of water. You have to either keep the ship underway; essentially in a holding pattern... or you dynamically position the ship using thrusters and sea-floor beacons. Neither of these is cheap, requiring 24/7/365 licensed merchant marine officers on the bridge and in the engine room. And if the ship is dynamically positioned you need officers who are qualified to operate this equipment as well. Drill ships use these guys... and they are expensive and expect to work 28 days on and get 28 days off... with pay. So you'll need two crews.
Provisioning... getting food, fuel and other supplies out to the ship... is also not cheap and would probably require a "workboat" of the type drill rigs use. If nothing else, the insurance company (you *are* going to be insured, right?) will require this as a safety measure.
If you flag your ship offshore you cannot move it from one U.S. port to another... you have to touch at another - foreign - port in between. This is why cruise ships from Seattle to Alaska stop in British Columbia. Crew is cheaper but you incur a whole slew of other problems including convincing the USA that you can operate a foreign flag ship in the economic exclusion zone.
Cell phones do not work 24 nm at sea... or even 12 nm offshore... and satellite communication is remarkably expensive. And bandwidth is not all that great over the communications satellites. You can get bandwidth from other sources but the latency is terrible. At least it's cheaper.
Since I am a retired merchant marine officer (who also operated dynamic positioning equipment on several drill rigs) I can tell you that many people get very claustrophobic on a ship. Seven days on a cruise liner is no preparation for a couple of months on a converted whatever.
I'm sure there are other pitfalls but those are just the most obvious ones.
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
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Sounds like an idea that has been had before. SeaCode in 2005.
Du Plane Du Plane, Took me Job, me Job!
Table-ized A.I.
"Why not telecommute" is a good question, which we address in our FAQ - http://www.blueseed.co/faq.html#silicon_valley, http://www.blueseed.co/faq.html#telepresence
Incidentally, since you mention Vancouver,
In November 2011, ABC News reported on the story of Amit Aharoni, an Israeli startup entrepreneur who, after creating 9 American jobs, received a letter from the US Citizenship and Immigration Serice (USCIS) denying his visa request and notifying him to leave the country immediately. Aharoni left for Vancouver and tried to run his company (an online cruise booking service) remotely via Skype. That didn't quite work out, so he set to work on making his story public. After ABC World News picked up the story, USCIS reversed their decision within 24 hours. The moral is that running a startup remotely can be big enough of a pain to warrant mounting a media campaign, and that unless they manage to attract massive media attention, a startup entrepreneur without a valid visa may have to relocate their operations outside of the U.S.
Regrettably, the OP didn't include a link to our FAQ, which would have cleared up many concerns.
We'll be anchored 12 nautical miles (22 km) offshore. The water depth is around 250ft, as can be seen on Google Earth.
For internet connectivity, we'll be using solutions similar to the Ubiquity Solution radios and antennas - range 75km, bandwidth 150Mbps per combo. Satellite backup from Skycasters (6Mbps/1.5Mbps) is only $100/mo as long as your main line is up.
One of the accommodation barges we're thinking of is 190m x 45m.
SwedishChef, given your experience, we're definitely interested in your constructive input. Drop us a line if you'd like at http://blueseed.co/contact-us.html
1. In a zone contiguous to its territorial sea, described as the contiguous zone, the coastal State may exercise the control necessary to:
(a) prevent infringement of its customs, fiscal, immigration or sanitary laws and regulations within its territory or territorial sea;
(b) punish infringement of the above laws and regulations committed within its territory or territorial sea.,
2. The contiguous zone may not extend beyond 24 nautical miles from the baselines from which the breadth of the territorial sea is measured.
Essentially, the 12 to 24 NM area is a "hot pursuit zone". Earning a wage 12.1NM from shore is perfectly legal.
http://www.blueseed.co/faq.html#telepresence
If anyone wades through the insightful comments up to this point,
1. Blueseed has an FAQ that answers a lot of concerns
2. Peter Thiel is now onboard
And entire pipedream industry worth $30Bn.
We've done a lot of research about seasickness, and it won't be much of a problem for an accommodation barge of the size we're considering.
How about we just fix the visa laws?
Better yet, how about we fix the education system in the US so that there are actually locals that are able to do this work? It's a sad condemnation of the US school systems that with nearly 10% unemployment there are technology companies so desperate for skilled workers that this even is a suggestion.
You're missing the import of 1.a.
It's a lot more than "hot pursuit" (which they have the right to do even in international waters). Sure, you can earn a wage 12.1 nm from shore, but you're still subject, as per 1.a, to all customs, fiscal, and immigration laws. Infringe, you pay. Earn a wage, you pay.
The "hot pursuit zone" is from 24nm out.
Back in 2005, two guys started something called "SeaCode", which was supposed to be a cruise ship 3 miles off the coast of San Diego in order to circumvent U.S. immigration / visa requirements.
As far as I can tell, the effort never got off the ground, stillborn. Website is still up, but it looks like it hasn't changed in 7 years.
This looks like another spin on the same thing.
Why have an immigration law? Just charge whatever the average transportation cost is, make that a fee for walk-ins. Like it used to be. If you can scrape up the bucks to pay to get here, then you got a reason to be here, we welcome you. Maybe give a bonus to places willing to let us send them surplus Americans lol.
You are going to convince *talented* people to leave their country, their homes etc. to live on a boat for most of the year when they could very well do 99.9% of what you want them to do on the boat at home? Something tells me the "talent" you are looking for isn't that talented, and you aren't going to be attracting the highest caliber of people.
Monstar L
I think you misunderstood. You're obviously educated. I'm sure DesScorp meant in general.
When you cut out the fancy pools, marble floors, fireworks, water coaster, delicious food, drinks and shows, I'm sure you can save a heck of a lot. If $800 can get you on an actual cruise ship for 3 days off season, it stands to reason that it sure as hell put you on a dead boat with Top Ramen and cable for a heck of a lot longer. Imagine fishermen with no fish and a laptop.
Unrelated side note:
An actual cruise can be a rather economical vacation decision once you factor in accommodations, shows, food, etc. and compare that package to hotel, shows, food, etc. separate, especially when you factor in the travel to destinations and return to your starting port. I already left a hint above which cruise line I'm a fan of.
"If America lets the highly skilled people in, at least their money will be spent inside the country..."
It deserves EMPHASIS!
Local unemployment can be fixed by creating jobs. Startups create jobs, while large companies lose them. http://blueseed.co/faq.html#Americans