Rotterdam bridge to be dismantled for Oceanco's 127m sailing yacht Y721 | Hacker News Reader

Rotterdam bridge to be dismantled for Oceanco's 127m sailing yacht Y721

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127m being meters, not millions (although heaven knows how much this thing costs).

And the dismantling being limited to temporarily removing the center span of the bridge as well, in case that was ambiguous.

I don’t have any affection for Bezos, but this doesn’t seem that ridiculous to me. The municipality wants the jobs that come with building yachts, the trade off of having to sometimes adjust infrastructure to make it happen seems reasonable.

The bridge dismantling isn’t why a huge personal yacht is disgusting, indeed.

It is just a poor choice of resource allocation, any way you look at it. Personally for Bezos, or as a society

Why do you think so? Isn't it much cheaper and easier on the environment to dismantle a bridge (that was probably built with that in mind) than to move an entire city of professionals+the infrastructure around them away to a more suitable place?

I think they meant, building/owning a superyacht.

I think the point was the millions spent on this boat could have been allocated instead to improving society, rather than a boat that will likely only get used once per year.

I’m sure the boat builders are very happy to take the money. It’s not like the money just disappears.

The only resources being used up here are one boat’s worth of metal/plastic/energy/whatever. Probably about as much as a couple of hundred cars.

Money is fake, it's an abstraction made of cheap throw away goods (what money is printed on) used as a representation for real resources. I personally wouldn't count it as relevant but it does buy access to what is relevant.

I would add to your list, some of the finite resources I can think of that's wasted here is labor per human per year. The labor of those boat builders. It's an opportunity cost type of waste.

That and many hours of skilled work that could be applied elsewhere.

You could add “luxury yacht builder” to the very, very long list of jobs that exist only to provide entertainment to other people.

Indeed, but those people could make luxury yacht for 100 people, dividing uselessness by 100.

They didn’t build the boat out of bank notes. The $500M is in the pocket of the thousands of people involved in the supply chain for the shipyard. Much better use society-wise than keeping that value parked in financial instruments.

While I do agree that having money put to use is preferable to not, the argument that any spending is therefore good seems somewhat absurdist. We wouldn’t apply that logic to government spending, for example - the government gold-plating Air Force One produces different effects than the government building water sanitation, even though they both result in economic activity. Accordingly, some spending produces more social good than others. The argument that critics of spending like this isn’t that it would be better for the money to sit in financial instruments, it’s that the money would be better off partially captured via taxes and more directly allocated to social good.

Well, it's his money.

The world is probably full of things that shouldn't exist by that standard. Do we "need" all the big cathedrals, pyramids, temples, expensive to make works of art to name a few?

Others have already commented in a similar manner but I think this is worth driving home since the argument you provide is so typical when it comes to these discussions.

The money spent on the yacht has improved society.

The evidence of such is that the public officials in Rotterdam are willing to temporarily move a bridge so that construction of the yacht can continue within their municipality. They see it as a greater benefit to their society to encourage the construction of such yachts. Oceanco employs 320 people whose salaries are likely taxed at a fairly high rate. They have two shipyards in Rotterdam on which they probably pay significant property tax among other fees. They are a manufacturing business and yachts consist of a huge variety of different materials and finished goods so they will be deeply integrated with the supply chain which means there is a large outflow of cash from them to other businesses. The production of luxury goods has a significant impact on an economy, by their nature they demand the highest quality parts and workmanship. Attracting those materials and skills to a city has many knock-on effects that are beneficial. If you removed the demand for or the option to buy super yachts, Rotterdam and other cities would suffer a loss of jobs, skills, tax income, and probably several other businesses.

I think the parent comment refers to how the cost of this vehicle could instead prevent around one hundred thousand deaths from maleria*, or uplift several entire communities out of poverty, or provide education to thousands of children, or some other societal good.

* if we assume ballpark $300-400 million cost of construction.

I guess we could outlaw yachts and then collect money to lift all the people who used to build and work on yachts out of poverty :)

We don't have to outlaw yachts, just tax extreme wealth

This is exactly what the United States did, except it printed money rather than confiscate it. (The end result was the same though -- taxation through inflation.)

Even the left-leaning NY Times wrote a piece on how "luxury taxes" on yachts killed the industry.

https://www.nytimes.com/1991/01/03/opinion/l-boat-luxury-tax...

A nice idea, but unfortunately that's not how resource allocation works.

The building of the superyacht brings in money to the ship builders this is true, don't know how much will assume at least 1B if it costs 500M to move dismantle part of bridge.

But of course that money could have been spent on other things, it even seems suboptimal for Bezos, which implies to me he must have so much money he doesn't actually know what to do with it.

But even worse, the 500M to dismantle part of bridge evidently isn't considered in cost of superyacht so there is a loss of 500M from city's budget because of the money because building superyacht is worth more than this loss to city - but you can see how that is a worse deal for Rotterdam then if Bezos had superyacht built without needing to dismantle bridge.

This place would've been looking for another super yacht contract if Bezos didn't come around. It's not like Bezos caused this city to develop yachts, they built this industry there themselves and they need clients.

Bezos is paying for the bridge, not the city.

>Bezos is paying for the bridge, not the city.

This was not evident from the article?

>This place would've been looking for another super yacht contract if Bezos didn't come around

They build ships, they would have been looking for another building a ship contract.

The bridge is not in use any more. It has the status of a historical landmark (monument). In 2017 it has been renovated during which the 'bridge' part was removed for some time (years) and the city government promised that it would never be removed again. Now, they have agreed that this part of the bridge will be removed again for a certain period. Removing the part is not trivial as it was not designed to be easily removed.

Still, they probably considered that when they approved a shipbuilding business within their city borders.

Oceanco is not within Rotterdam municipal borders. It's downriver in Alblasserdam. But still, Rotterdam wants to keep the shipbuilding and outfitting industry in the region strong. Removing this bridge for a few days really isn't a big deal. If the yacht was not owned by someone well known it would not go beyond Rotterdam local news.

Well the cool thing about Western democracies is that nobody cares what you think about what they spend their money on.

And the folks hired to built that yacht (versus a home or a new company) are probably pretty happy to get the business.

> Well the cool thing about Western democracies is that nobody cares what you think about what they spend their money on.

The cool thing about democracies is that we could democratically decide to tax the ultra-wealthy at a much higher rate.

> And the folks hired to built that yacht (versus a home or a new company) are probably pretty happy to get the business.

And glass-makers are happy when it hails, but that doesn't mean we should be going around breaking windows.

> The cool thing about democracies is that we could democratically decide to tax the ultra-wealthy at a much higher rate.

And yet it doesn't happen

> And glass-makers are happy when it hails, but that doesn't mean we should be going around breaking windows.

No one is going around breaking windows to give window makers jobs

> And yet it doesn't happen

Sure it does. Quite a few European countries have a top tax bracket in the 50% range. Denmark's capital gains rate is 42%, more than double what Bezos pays here.

Have a guess why Jeff Bezos hasn't decided to move to Denmark.

I suspect the US could raise capital gains tax fairly substantially before it made sense for Bezos to move himself, his assets, and his company out of the US.

Maybe you're right. Maybe not. I don't know. I have somewhat the opposite opinion though — I believe people in his position have all manner of resources to facilitate the movement of assets.

> I believe people in his position have all manner of resources to facilitate the movement of assets.

Sure... and yet, Bezos hasn't moved his assets somewhere with zero capital gains tax, like Switzerland. There are clearly benefits to being in the US that are worth the 20% tax rate to him. I think a lot of them would still be present if it were 30-40%.

That's because capital gains in Denmark aren't really capital gains, they just tax it as income.

Short-term capital gains in the US are also taxed according to income tax rates, so 37% for the top bracket, which isn't far off 42%.

I can guarantee you Bezos is ensuring his Amazon shares aren't selling as short-term capital gains.

Indeed. But it is not clear to me that Denmark's system of not distinguishing between the two is better than the US system of allowing long-term investments to incur less of a tax burden than short-term speculative gains.

Do you know how you don't pay capital gains tax? You leverage your assets and are given credit. That way you don't need to sell the assets to make use of them.

Guess who typically does this? The very wealthy. Guess who doesn't do it? Less wealthy people.

Many of these tax laws that are enacted end up affecting people who are upper middle class and don't affect the mega rich at all.

> No one is going around breaking windows to give window makers jobs.

Not literally no. But metaphorically it does happen all the time:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window#O...

So kind of like using a HELOC to borrow against the equity of your home to invest in other things without paying tax on the sale?

Maybe. I don't know the specifics of it. I was listening to a podcasts and they were explaining the general principle of how leveraging works with regards to Bitcoin.

The point I was generally making is that more complicated tax laws normally don't tax the people that they purport to target and normally end up affecting those that are a couple of rungs down in the class hierarchy that everyone pretends that doesn't exist in most Western Societies.

For example. This was a few years ago. I saw a headline where I think I paid (relatively) a greater proportion of tax from my small Limited Company than one of American coffee franchises paid in the UK. Due to them doing some tax wangling with Ireland. If I were to do the same, I would have HMRC investigating me and I wouldn't be able to afford such an investigation. They probably have a dedicated tax compliance team. I don't.

Well said.

They're already skirting the rate that they're supposed to be paying through various machinations. They have an army of accountants, lawyers, powerful people working for them to do just that.

If all else fails just treat the lawmakers who decide the tax laws and their enforcement to a nice golf trip with steak dinner and hey who are these lovely young ladies who've decided us old men are cool people to spend the evening with, let's get them some champagne.

Or contribute to their (re-)election campaign...

Please provide a source that shows Bezos “skirted the rate they were supposed to pay”.

Are you American? I feel like Americans have almost completely abandoned the near-axiomatic points you made here.

Democracies certainly could increase tax rates and Bezos would most likely have started Amazon somewhere else.

And no, glass makers and hail aren’t comparable. You need to bone up on your economics and the broken window fallacy.

Where would that somewhere else be? And would he have been as successful?

Sorry I don’t have a crystal ball to see into a hypothetical future.

It would depend on the rates?

I mean Musk paid $500M in taxes last year on a $1.5B exercise of options.

How high you want to go?

You claimed it was likely so I assumed you had something close to a crystal ball.

Whether you appeal to "democracy" or "free markets" or the trickle down effect or whatever, I think it is incorrect to attribute a weight of numbers endorsing his choices.

The customers and shareholders (and voters and regulators and business partners, etc. etc.) of Amazon did not vote for his yacht.

Bezos is one person with an outsized influence on society and if you don't trust other powerful individuals, it's illogical to give him a pass.

A capitalist and a king and a commissar with comparable powers aren't fundamentally different just because they are labeled differently.

This is a perfect example of why extreme wealth inequality is bad. It leads to sub-optimal uses of the economy, like this.

Isn't 95% of every resource use "sub-optimal"? Everyone goes to holidays or buys stuff they do not need. Bezos is just rich enough so that his spending goes into the news.

Yes but this is an extreme example

Right, but how do you compare? Where do you draw the line?

> Where do you draw the line?

500m dollar yacht seems like a good place to start, we can work our way back from there.

Well I can't speak for everyone else, but your arbitrary conception of what is "too much" actually doesn't cut it for me.

I'm not arguing that my definition is the correct one, I'm arguing that we can and have drawn lines before and are capable of doing it again.

Neither can I, but it's easier for me to accept a billionaire doing something that's at least really new and different.

I'm not a fan of Elon Musk, but I feel much less negative about his ventures than about Bezos, simply because they are adding to the world of what is possible. Bezos' rockets seem like a "me too" thing. People often say expensive things are "status symbols". It appears that Musk really wants to make science fiction real, independently of what anyone else does, and I suspect Bezos of actually being obsessed with relative status. Who knows if that's fair, but that's how it looks.

Maybe if he paid his warehouse workers a living wage, and didn't force them to keep working while a tornado destroys a facility killing them, or piss in bottles while delivering packages. Maybe then he would only have enough left over for a somewhat smaller yacht and it wouldn't be quite so outrageous.

Going on vacation can be useful for culture, resting or improving your knowledge of the world. Spending 1000x the resources for this is 0.999 economical waste.

If I go on holiday, I’m not mis-allocating 100s of millions of dollars. I simply don’t have the power to do that, and maybe nobody should to prevent this kind of issue in the first place.

> Isn't 95% of every resource use "sub-optimal"?

Depends:

> If we suppose that the goal of society is to produce the greatest utility, and that the utility wealth provides an individual is sub-linear (i.e. twice as much money makes you less than twice as happy), then inequality is inefficient resource allocation.

> However, we also suppose that some level of inequality can lead to greater productivity, and thus greater utility overall. The question is then what level produces the best outcome?

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14505342

At want point is the cut-off in the diminishing returns of utility/happiness?

It’s not suboptimal for the shipbuilders, or any of the thousands of people and hundreds of associated companies all the way down the supply chain.

The fact that the end product happens to be a yacht is largely irrelevant to the economic impact and value of this investment.

There very well will be hundreds of key innovations and significant investments in R&D, materials science, construction techniques, etc. that stem from the investment made into building this product.

The more money Bezos spends the better, and I’m personally glad he’s spending some of it on projects like this. Just because it’s privately owned doesn’t make it any less a of an incredible feat of engineering and accomplishment of human ingenuity.

It will also employ hundreds if not thousands of people for years into the future (maintenance is much more expensive than the initial build).

> There very well will be hundreds of key innovations and significant investments in R&D, materials science, construction techniques, etc. that stem from the investment made into building this product.

No? Is there something special about this yacht outside of its size? Why would there be any innovation around it?

Size requires innovation in all kinds of context, this is a narrow view. What about earth moving equipment, skyscrapers, IT systems, etc. ?

I'm sure it required at least 1 bit of special tooling, capacity, or engineering. Ignoring downstream innovation challenges, like the bridge. You don't think there is an opportunity for innovation there? Maybe they make improvements when they replace it

I think it’s common to underestimate the hidden complexity in things. Even the smallest widget can contain surprising amounts of innovation. Take the diminutive Apple iPhone Wall Charger - that little wart is the culmination of decades of safe and efficient AC/DC design.

A biggest in the world sailing yacht will have hundreds of innovations just in construction of the masts. All the rigging is likely custom materials and hardware, they are probably using exotic techniques in all sorts of ways.

No average sailor will ever use these "innovations" tho.

Also you don't necessarily want to innovate too much when you want to build something reliable.

Boats at this calibre take months if not years to iron out all the build kinks - it's custom made after all.

I'd love someone like Bezos or Musk to build a robotic dry stack of e-boats for public to use by subscription basis - something that can actually take innovating, can be scaled everywhere in the world, has positive impact (grid balancing) and is useful.

The more money Bezos spends the better,

Not if it cranks up the global carbon footprint, and wastes resources better left in the ground. At some people we simply don't need to grant these people the "right" to build whatever ego-inflating toys they want, wherever they want.

Useless $500m boats like that simply shouldn't be built.

"Cranks up" the global carbon footprint -- relative to what? "Wastes" resources better left in the ground -- according to whom? You think someone needs to be _granted_ the *right* to research and develop a great feat of human engineering?

What it sounds like you're describing is communism, and it's an incredibly destructive and brutal philosophy to try to control people like this.

I have no issue with Bezos paying the full share of the net externalities of the project. I suspect a proper accounting would show significant net positive externalities to society, but if the scales were net negative then by all means tax it. I suspect that amount of taxes Bezos will pay all said and done as a result of this project are fairly astronomical.

To say that a person has no business or no right or no reason to build something incredible like this is beyond sad, it's a line of thinking that free democracies have gone to war against to protect themselves from.

To say this creation should not allowed to be built in any case, is IMO a violation of basic human rights and decency and crushing to the human spirit.

What I see as "incredibly destructive and brutal" is getting your jollies building useless toys while the planet is dying. When I hear the phrase "violating basic human rights and decency", I think of how this guy runs his warehouses. And letting your people die because you never did preparation drills, and had them come to work during a major storm so your business could save a few pennies.

Edwardsville city officials identified the names of the six deceased on Sunday, who ranged in age from 26 to 62.

Among the victims identified by authorities was Larry Virden, 46, whose daughter Justice Virden told ABC News' Rob Marciano for "Good Morning America", "I walked out of that building after they told me my dad was gone, and I dropped to my knees and screamed at the sky at the top of my lungs."

"I said 'No, my dad's coming home," Justice Virden said. "'I need my daddy. He can't leave.'"

"Wastes" resources better left in the ground -- according to whom?

The same people who decide, for example, that you can't just chop down a forest of old-growth trees so that you can make a killing selling them as chopsticks.

Whom you are welcome to call "communists" if you want.

Innovation is going to be around building more yachts like this, not "budget" $1M 15-meter boats suitable for families sailing around the world.

I'd be all in for superyachts like this were they used for public education, tourism, expeditions. Now it's going to just sit with 20 people on crew and be used twice a year.

Boats like these spend more on fuel while idling or relocating than when they are actually used by owner.

IMHO if you can't handle it by yourself then it's just too big.

I'm going to assume you've heard of the "broken window fallacy" and Eisenhower's speech about defense spending taking away from the hungry, and ask you why the principle doesn't resonate?

"The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter with a half-million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. . . "

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chance_for_Peace_speech

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window

The yacht itself may be suboptimal, but for all the skilled tradesmen who built the ship, and the dozens of people who will operate it, it is what makes the economy work.

Having skilled people spend their time on this is exactly why it is suboptimal. Had Bezos spent $500 million on Bitcoin or, say, gold bars, it wouldn't matter much. Up to rounding errors, it is just moving numbers around. Here we have $500 million dollars' worth of people's time and effort going to waste. For all the good this yacht does, they might as well be digging holes in the ground and then filling them up again.

It costs money to maintain a specialized skilled labor force. The capital investments (human capital and infrastructure) to maintain and run the shipyard would not be required to dig holes.

What needs be recognized is that "allowing" Bezos to do this is not an ideological or engineering question between what is optimal or suboptimal. It's a question of how much confidence do we have in our interventions. Humans naturally engage in trade and acquisitive behaviors. There have been rich and powerful men for many millenia before Adam Smith wrote Wealth of Nations and capitalism became a philosophy. Commerce is a default, not an imposition.

The question is whether armchair hot takes, politicians, bureaucrats, economists, and ideologues are qualified to make confiscatory decisions against "the wealthy" that will not do more harm than good to society as a result. Our world is a system that is too complex to understand easily, or sometimes at all. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. There isn't mass human misery resulting from this yacht, but preventing the order could lose people their jobs and have who-knows-what consequences. So maybe we should chill.

Despite the fallibility of "our interventions", they have to be weighed against the fallibility of a small number of billionaires.

We don't live in a world that's big enough for millions of Bezos's to average out, so I think it's a fallacy to appeal to a laissez faire, free market approach. To the extent it works and seems logical, that's in the context of a huge economy with millions of people.

Bezos being the product of a (sort of) free market doesn't make his actions free-markety once he's attained his current level of power. Treating him as different from "politicians, bureaucrats, economists, and ideologues" is wrong because he's not fundamentally different.

>$500 million on Bitcoin or, say, gold bars

In both of those cases, wouldn't the creation of those assets require burning $500M in real stuff? Gold as well as Bitcoin costs what it costs because of the expense of mining, which is real peoples' lives, materials, and fuel burned.

If Bezos kept his $500M in Amazon stock or cash or something, then it would be just numbers and not waste.

comments like this drive me stark raving mad. its just nonsense that somehow is taken, unexamined, into the psyche of a whole generation.

1) there is not a consensus as to what an optimal economy looks like for reasons so numerous its unimaginable someone would make such a claim, but include things like: globalism vs nationalism, hedonism vs utilitarianism, militarism vs pacifism, importance of a problem vs tractability of a problem, etc ad infinitum.

2) even if there was somehow a consensus on what an optimal economy is, its a floating target. economics is based on intangibles like demand and peoples feelings. if such a thing were to exist, it couldnt exist for long and would require constant change.

3) what an optimal economy could even theoretically be requires knowledge of the future. if earth becomes uninhabitable in 1 year due to meteor impact, the optimal economy certainly doesnt involve anything but meteor detection and defense. or from volcanic eruption. or solor flare/ejection. or nuclear war.

do you bemoan a suboptimal economy when people buy 50 sneakers? or candy and soda? or have 5 TVs? or 3 computers? what does wealth inequality have to do with anything? what are you even talking about?

We have generally accepted metrics we use to measure how the economy is doing. Things like GDP, productivity, or even more proxy-like things like life expectancy and happiness.

Sure, maybe this type of activity counts towards the GDP in the short term, but long term a giant yacht isn't capital that is going to give a return on the investment. For other metrics it is useless as well. It makes 1 person (and maybe his friends) a bit happier for an extreme cost. I think by most metrics this is a poor allocation of resources in the medium or long term. It's just an ultra rich guy spending a ton of capital to make himself happy.

Sure, you won't be able to get consensus on what an optimal economy should be. But I think we could agree on a few simple universal requirements like, how about everyone has dignified living conditions -- in terms of shelter, food, health, safety. We actually kind of already agreed on these things in the UN human rights charter. And the current economic model is failing about half of all humans on these points.

Maybe this can help you to see how comments like yours in discussions about examples of extreme displays of wealth inequality might be the ones that actually drive people mad.

> It is just a poor choice of resource allocation

Well, not always. And sometimes many stone-cold, rational people flash money. Just to improve business.

A friend of mine was perfectly happy with his shit of a car even though he could afford something much better.

Then he started a business. A business that involved communicating and meeting with people very outside of our tech or liberal/vegan/minimalist/generic-dominant-fad bubbles.

These people cared about the car he drove. They did not want to be seen or meeeting or seen with someone with a shitty car or using a cab. Perception mattered, and business was hurt.

Then, that friend bought a BMW just to drive it to meetings. He also keeps his old car and drives for personal use.

There might be some people, important to Bezos's business that care about where they meet with him. Bezos wants it to be a yatch.

Can't blame him without more information.

He might be a money-flashing, wealth-displaying rich asshole. But I am willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.

> There might be some people, important to Bezos's business that care about where they meet with him. Bezos wants it to be a yatch.

> He might be a money-flashing, wealth-displaying rich asshole. But I am willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.

So you're willing to to give him the benefit of the doubt that there's a chance he needs to impress other wealth-displaying rich assholes like your friend's colleagues? This is almost a worse reason than him just wanting the absurd boat in the first place.

Bezos literally flew to space, with a rocket designed by a company he owns. I'm fairly certain he can use a much smaller yacht to seem important to other rich people and will still be taken seriously.

> Bezos literally flew to space, with a rocket designed by a company he owns.

Perhaps I'm being too picky here, but he remained way below the Kármán line...

But Bezos needs no business card… likewise, people aren't going to ignore Warren Buffet just because he spends modestly. It makes sense to give your friend the benefit of the doubt, but why on earth would you extend that to Jeff Bezos on the matter of buying mega-yachts?

Can't blame him without more information.

Nothing to do with "blame", or being an asshole. At some point we just can't let these people keep gobbling up resources like there's no tomorrow. Doesn't matter how much money they have. That doesn't buy them any special rights.

Bezos is not at the level where he could possibly be doing that.

Do you really think there is any person or entity that Amazon does business with, that will do significantly more because he has rockets and yachts?

Bezos appears to want to do things that are not original, simply because other billionaires do them. The very essence of status symbolism.

Lots of people hate Elon Musk, and I'm hardly a fan, but wanting to make science fiction real seems to me easier to respect and accept. He wants to go to Mars because he genuinely wants to do it.

They say it costs upwards of US$500M.

> 127m being meters, not millions (although heaven knows how much this thing costs).

If rumors are to be believed, it’s over three times that, at €430m.

(https://www.euroweeklynews.com/2021/10/25/jeff-bezos-has-a-n...)

Can someone summarise what exactly makes a yacht cost so much? Solid gold taps everywhere? A similarly sized luxurious house would be a fraction of this (and yes appreciate it has to float and has engines and such, but similar yachts are vastly cheaper).

I guess it’s because of much lower use of off-the-shelf materials.

Partly that’s unavoidable. The hull has a unique shape, and that means you can’t just put standard kitchens, bathtubs, etc. in if you want your design to shout ‘luxury’.

For yachts in this category, I guess even the door handles, flooring, etc. are custom designed.

This ship also wil have huge carbon masts that are unique in the world.

That adds up. I guess Apple’s spaceship office similarly is quite a bit more expensive per m² than your regular office building.

Everything has to be salt-proof. Corrosion even in coastal homes is huge. On water everything starts to rust within days. Plus exponential growth in size - larger boat means bigger masts, bigger sails, bigger winches to move it, more power to winches, bigger generators, larger fuel tanks.

You should compare it with airplanes which would make it sound like bargain...

What sounds a bit ridiculous is that they apparently are only noticing this problem now - I mean, they knew the dimensions of the yacht when they accepted the order to build it, but they waited until it's almost finished to say "oops, we have this huge almost finished yacht worth $$$$$$ and we can't deliver it to the customer unless you dismantle a bridge"?! And the municipality, out of the goodness of their hearts, will probably use taxpayer money instead of billing the shipbuilder for it?

What's even more puzzling is that the problem is only with the masts, and it's apparently not possible to detach the masts and reattach them later? If I were Jeff Bezos, I would be worried about what this means for future repairs to the yacht...

> will probably use taxpayer money instead of billing the shipbuilder for it?

No, Bezos is paying for it.

They knew the issue when they got the order. They probably ran it by the city informally then. Anyone routinely engaged in this kind of heavy industry is going to have an understanding of the city's disposition to these sorts of things and know who they need to run these things by. Now that all the details have been tentatively agreed on they're formally asking.

Alternatively, it may have been a case of "if we get permission great, if we don't then we'll install the masts elsewhere for an extra several mil."

This is common for large items, all kinds of products need special permits to move them due to their size.

I'm sure they knew, and had a mitigation plan in place. Almost sounds like there weren't a lot of options.. "this is such a large project that there are hardly any locations where this work is finished."

And even if the municipality were to pay for it "Rotterdam has also been declared the maritime capital of Europe. Shipbuilding and activity within that sector are therefore an important pillar for the municipality." Seems like a fee they would be willing to pay to hold that title, or would be required for it. How is it any different than a state subsidizing a business district to generate jobs and taxes?

Well, not 127 millions, but 500 millions.. https://www.businessinsider.com/jeff-bezos-superyacht-photos...

Agreed, just so long as Bezos paid for the deconstruction and reconstruction of the bridge along with any associated effects from the bridge being out of commission for a time.

> I don’t have any affection for Bezos, but this doesn’t seem that ridiculous to me. The municipality wants the jobs that come with building yachts, the trade off of having to sometimes adjust infrastructure to make it happen seems reasonable.

I dunno, the article states that it's only the masts that are a problem, so can't they tow the boat through and attach the masts after it's passed by the bridge?

Serious question as I know next to nothing about yachts.

The title is really misleading. Bezos isn’t sailing through the bridge and having it dismantled to get it out of his way. A Rotterdam shipbuilder _assembling_ the yacht has specialized requirements and needs to do part of the assembly on one side of the bridge.

But it’s a lot funnier imagining a Duke or Lord riding atop his minions (literally on their backs) and nonchalantly waiving to have trees and villages be destroyed to accommodate his path. Oh, and that whole going to space thing in a giant dick shaped rocket.

I'm Dutch.

The way I see it, a 500 million dollar yacht is being built in my country, and in return we have to dismantle a bridge, that isn't even in use, for a single day and we don't have to pay for it.

Although I find the super yacht industry rather disgusting, in this particular instance it sounds like a pretty good deal for Rotterdam honestly.

This is perhaps a somewhat unpopular opinion, but I'm always pleased when I hear ultra-rich people spending exorbitant amounts of money on something.

Without going into the discussion of whether or not people should be able to accumulate huge fortunes in the first place, given the fact that they exist, such spending means that they are putting huge sums of money back into the hands of "the people": In exchange for this boat, Bezos is moving 500M$ from his bank account to the bank accounts of many, many people working on it directly and indirectly thus moving the pendulum a tiny bit towards financial equality. Considering that the real-world alternative was for him to not have done this, remain under the radar, and keep 500M laying around, I think this is the better option.

The alternative isn't that the money sits in a bank account. The better alternative would be that those 500M went to Amazon employees instead of the CEO. The employees could have used it to buy nice winter boots for their kids. Probably a lot more useful than yet another boat dumping tons of toxic waste into the ocean.

You are allowed to start a company as a co-op. Feel free to start your own Amazon competitor.

Boat or bank are the only two current realistic alternatives I see. At least the boat builders & associated kids get some new boots. There are thousands of nicer alternatives that aren't going to happen

Money sitting in a bank account is fine. It's not using any real resources sitting there. Of course, he might spend it sooner or later, which would probably be bad for everyone except him. So even better (for everyone but him) would be if he converted the money to paper bills, and then burned them all. That would benefit millions of people. (Exactly who would depend on which country's currency the bills were in.)

It's not a bridge that is actually in use. It's a historical bridge that's a national monument.

That's... worse.

It may not be. The bridge (https://rotterdampages.com/architecture-de-hef-rotterdam/) has a movable deck that can be taken out and hung back, so if the opening between the pillars is wide enough for the yacht, it should be a fairly easy operation.

Yes, and the last time that happened it caused such a commotion that the government promised to never do it again.

I thought the 'commotion' was due to them wanting to demolish it originally.

Do note that the bridge is not in use for traffic and only a monument. The government did say it wasn't going to be dismantled anymore though.

What annoys me about this isn't that it's Bezos building a ridiculous yacht. Eat the rich and all that aside, let's talk about the arrogance of Oceanco.

They knew the height of the bridge. They knew the planned height of the yacht. The started building anyway without first asking. They simply presumed they could get what they wanted. How? Well the article explains how very well.

> He added: "From an economic perspective and maintaining employment, the municipality considers this a very important project."

The veiled threat being "Oh, you like having jobs here? Would be a shame if something happened to that."

And of course they could just not put the mast on here, and do it elsewhere, but:

> it was "not practical" to partially finish the vessel and complete the build elsewhere. "If you carry out a big job somewhere, you want all your tools in that place. Otherwise you have to go back and forth constantly. In addition, this is such a large project that there are hardly any locations where this work is finished."

IE: We do have other places we could do this work, but just not as cheaply as we can do it here, by inconveniencing the local population for days by removing their bridge.

And Rotterdam will probably do what they say. Because they're right- the corporations do control them this way.

Well either the jobs are worth it or they are not. This actually does seem like a clear cut case of "if you won't do this for us we can't keep building here".

Yeah agreed. They should pay for the bridge’s removal/construction.

The yacht builder will pay for dismantling and rebuilding the bridge.

> They should pay for the bridge’s removal/construction.

Oceano and Bezos will reimburse the costs: https://nltimes.nl/2022/02/02/rotterdam-bridge-taken-apart-l...

This is much ado about nothing.

The bridge is an historical artifact, it isn't used as a bridge.

>IE: We do have other places we could do this work, but just not as cheaply as we can do it here, by inconveniencing the local population for days by removing their bridge.

The bridge is a monument and does not carry traffic.

If it did carry traffic they would almost certainly have said no or required it be an overnight job. Overnight temporary removal of infrastructure like that is common in the world of hauling very bulky industrial things.

I agree with all of that, but on the other hand doesn't Oceanco have some pressure on it to actually deliver the product?

If Rotterdam's government went all "sure we'll hack the bridge for you, but it's going to cost €15 million, and we need to know 3 months in advance" or whatever [1], I wouldn't expect Oceanco to go "no way, we're moving out, you can say bye-bye to N jobs and some high-profile on-brand industry presence" because then the actual customer paying Oceanco €450M or whatever will be like "cough cough excuse us, but where is our yacht?". I imagine the contract-breaching fines on not delivering a yacht in this price range are in the "hefty+" range. Right?

(Edited for brevity believe it or not.)

[1] Numbers taken straight from the air, I know nothing. I've been to Rotterdam vacationing for one day, built zero luxury yachts.

I think it's wrong to think of this as society vs. corporations. This is a case of society helping a corporation, because it's beneficial to both.

> E: We do have other places we could do this work, but just not as cheaply as we can do it here, by inconveniencing the local population for days by removing their bridge

No not really.

My father works for a company that builds large yachts company in the UK. He has built yachts for F1 drivers and team owners for the last 20 odd years. These yachts while large aren't on this size and it is true that the number of places where this work can be done is limited (there are literally only a few places left in the UK itself).

With something of this size there is probably only a few places where it can be done in the whole of Europe if not the entire world.

You are assuming the worst intentions here.

> And Rotterdam will probably do what they say. Because they're right- the corporations do control them this way.

The number of jobs that were provided by building this large yacht probably has enriched everyone in the city. Working people understand the trade-off.

EDIT: Other people have noted that the bridge itself doesn't carry traffic.

Despite the headline the details seem eminently reasonable. The bridge isn't going anywhere. They just asked the town if they can R&R the middle section of the bridge because the boat can't pass under it. This is a movable railway bridge so the R&R procedure is very, very simple and non-intrusive compared to any sort of bridge with a static span where the middle may be integral to the strength of the rest.

This sort of temporary removal of infrastructure is bog standard in the "hauling absurdly large and heavy things" world. It'll probably be a 9pm-5am closure or something like that and the locals will get to look at a larger than usual boat moored just upstream of the bridge and a large marine crane moored downstream in the days leading up to it.

It’s a historic bridge not in active use.

That's worse, it implies with enough money, something designated historical for cultural reasons can be bought, modified, commodified, or changed to accommodate the whims of one exceptionally wealthy man.

Does it?

To me, it implies that pride is the only actual utility of the bridge. Disabling the bridge wouldn't even inconvenience the municipality. So, lifting the bridge up and then putting it back down over the course of a couple hours is only as expensive as the labor to do it plus the risk to damaging the bridge.

From the view of a city council who may or may not love this monument, it's a complete and utter win:

* Tell the whole world we have this monument

* Collect money from the idiots who need to move it

* Collect even more money from the idiots if they screw it up.

It's a historic railroad bridge that was originally designed to allow the passage of ships. Both its original use and the accommodation afforded by its design show deference to the city's industrial economy. I'd bet 10:1 that if the original designers were around today and you asked them what we should do they'd say "Just remove the middle part, that's why we built it that way" and would have no qualms about it.

You are right. This bridge is designed for commerce to travel under it. I really don't think this is a big deal.

https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=koningshaven+bridge&id=...

It's a monumental bridge dating back to 1878, being the first of its kind in Europe. It was one of the first bridges to be reconstructed after the heavy bombardment of Rotterdam during WWII, and is a national monument. It holds significant value to the people living in the city. Any damage to it would be unacceptable.

Meanwhile, the yacht-under-construction was partially constructed at a different boat wharf, and moved to the current location for finishing - including installing the masts. They could have chosen to finish it downstream of the bridge but chose not to due to convenience.

Partially deconstructing a historic landmark to make it more convenient to build a billionaire's toy is not a good look.

I’m sure it’ll be fine. Bridges and especially metal drawbridges like this need constant maintenance and inspection. Have the shipyard pay for this work is properly a great deal for the port.

Why do so many billionaires have to get a yacht? Surely there are some who just aren't that interested in sailing?

Couldn't some of them have some more unique and wacky super-expensive hobbies just to shake things up? Like tennis with solid gold rackets or something?

> Couldn't some of them have some more unique and wacky super-expensive hobbies just to shake things up

Like space travel maybe? :P

That's just a fancier yacht IMO :P

why not both?

https://yachtharbour.com/news/inside-the-first-superyacht-to...

This seems … fine? Rotterdam is a huge shipping centre and doing things like this is not unusual for oversize components - if this was for a power station or the like it would be almost wholly unremarkable outside the local news.

Mega rich guy gets special treatment. People are annoyed.

The optics of this would be so easy to fix. Mega rich guy pays for revered landmark to be taken apart and put back together, but look, also pays for a new coat of paint. Everybody happy.

Lift Bridge Loosened for Louche Launch

Once upon a time masts were easily broken down for this sort of problem, but this thing's design must involve some sort of vertical turbines that aren't so easy to remove.

It's hard to get too upset about what amounts to a minor restoration of a steel engineering heritage site, but I wonder how many times you repeat the process before you either put your shipyard out by the container terminals or else put some pedestals underneath the structure to raise it as it's no longer connected to an active rail line.

"Check it out, Larry -- the Dutch are taking down their bridges for my boat!"

"That's real nice, Jeff. Call me when you buy a whole Hawaiian island to moor it next to."

I would argue that a more accurate title would be "Dutch shipyard coerces government to dismantle Rotterdam bridge temporarily"

How come the rich don’t buy airships instead? That would be a lot more fun to cruise around in.

Bezo's can have his yacht - it means jobs for the thousands of people it takes to build, operate it, maintain it, supply it and even those write outrage articles about it.

On a sidenote, has Blue Origin gone quiet since Bezos was in space? Was that the goal, to get him into semi-space, now they can shut down?

Building ships and moving bridges. Aren't Dutch notoriously good at both? Why is it a big deal then.

I didn't find who will pay for the costs of the removal and restoration.

Dutch media says the shipyard and Bezos.

According to https://nltimes.nl/2022/02/02/rotterdam-bridge-taken-apart-l... the shipbuilder will pay for it. It will take a week to take the bridge apart and another week to put it back together.

Which is no big deal compared to the alternatives of a) missing out on a $500m contract for the local shipbuilding industry or b) moving the entire shipyard downriver.

Why not lower the water under the bridge ? A 150m floating pool (mobile floodgate) where you put the boat in, from which you pump the water out to lower the boat. If the river is deep enough, that would be a reusable solution.

Great use of humanity's time...

We gave him our time(money), by buying from Amazon instead of the local Mom and Pop.

Communism is when you don't have to dismantle bridges to accomodate that one guy who got rich because the local economy depends on building a boat for him.

Ah... to be this rich where a bridge is dismantled for you!

Demonstrate you're living more than X months in your yatch out of jurisdictional water.... profit!

well, not profit, but at least that should mean a few tax breaks. Though not sure you'd make a profit when taking into consideration the cost of the yatch

depends on the scale of your tax bill

I'm sure Jeff's taxes must be interesting.

I don't think the $100k Foreign-earned income exclusion matters to Bezos too much.

He doesn't need to sail away for tax advantages. Tax lawyers are expensive, but not as much as the largest yatch in the world.

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