Monday, June 26, 2023

You're going to need a smaller boat.

Call me petty, but I just can't help enjoy a headline that begins with "Billionaires disappointed..." In this case, the rest of the story is "...after superyachts banned form Naples port" and I think the Germans have a word for what I'm feeling:
I'd like you to meet my good friend Gunther Schadenfreude. 
Here he is raising a glass to my shameful joy.
Pictured: Arnault's 110 meter floating
symbol of everything wrong with capitalism.
Evidently, the city of Naples, Italy, has recently banned yachts measuring over seventy-five meters from stem to stern or just under two hundred, fifty feet front to back for the metrically and nautically challenged (like me, I had to look those up). It's ostensibly a security measure, although I can't find anything explaining why. The end result here is that the world's current richest man, Bernard Arnault, tried to dock his one hundred-ten meter yacht in Naples and heard a word I suspect he's not been used to hearing after passing the billion-mark: "no." 

When the revolution comes and these guys
are being led to the guillotines and they ask
what they did to deserve this fate, it's this.
The boat? Yacht? Superyacht? Like I said, I'm not nautically inclined, but it's called the Symphony--because of course it is--and cost the billionaire one hundred and fifty million dollars of money, plus an additional fifteen million per year to operate. It features eight staterooms, a crew of twenty-seven to cater the the every whim of up to thirty-six passengers, a pool, and a helicopter pad. Superyachtfan.com goes on to gush about how the Symphony is eco-friendly because it uses thirty percent less energy than a comparable yacht. Yes. A comparable yacht.

Hey, do you know what would be a hundred percent more eco-friendly than sailing a rich dude and his friends around on luxury yacht with caterers and a helicopter pad?
"Damnit, another wildfire. If only more billionaires would follow
Bernard Arnault's noble example and buy marginally more energy efficient
superyachts, we could finally get climate change under control."
-exactly zero fire fighters ever
Above: the people of Naples scrambling to
grab some of the money rich yacht people rain
down upon them whenever they sail into port.
According to The Guardian article, the riches aren't taking it lying down. Their source at the Port of Naples says they are getting "letters from magnates" complaining about how they and their superyachts used to bring money and jobs to the city, not to mention fame, and that this ban is robbing the good people of Naples of the pleasure and prestige of their presence. Which, I mean, if you can think of anything more entitled than billionaires railing against the injustice of them having to dock somewhere else when vacationing in southern Italy, I'd love to hear it. 

Again, maybe I'm being petty and maybe this is sour grapes or something, but the planet is on fire and I pass tent city full of homeless people on my way to work every morning, and Bernard Arnault is sad because Naples won't let him park his glorified party boat. So maybe sell the Symphony, buy a less ludicrous yacht and I don't know, plant some trees or something? And maybe do it before we all wise up and grab the pitchforks and torches?
"Or the city of Naples could just give in and give me what I want.
I am, after all, the richest man in the world. Like, the entire world."
-Bernard Arnault, on the great injustice that has been 
visited upon him and his friends with superyachts.

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