General average (müşterek avarya), financial wars, sanctions and everything

MDN İstanbul

Titanic was sinking and nobody knew that it was actually sinking. More correctly, noone in charge wanted to believe it was sinking and the orchestra played on the usual tunes whilst cheers were in the air for some time more. In the end, everyone paid the price, including innocents unfortunately.

We are all living on the same boat hogging and sagging. Anyone’s misjudgments during the venture affects everyone on board equally.

As shipping professionals, we are quite accustomed to general average rules. Any party having an interest on the ship during a sea venture is to share captain’s intentional and succesful salvage costs/expenses proportionally. This may sound strange to a man on the street, yet in reality it is a pure integral fact of life.

Wars are no longer waged in battle fields with bloodshed and all that jazz, but in the field of the economy. We are bound by destiny in the area where we live, and we need each other’s resources whilst respecting each other’s safe zones. In the era of technology — including blockchain technology, which will shape the way we are living currently in the very near future — common sense tells us that there will soon be no borders, no apartheids, discrimination, no religious conflicts etc and that we are to live a in peaceful and clean world for generations to come if there will be one. We are to get rid of nuclear weapons first and help one another to get rid of nuclear weapons through mutual assurances. Cornering a strong cat leaves no chance to the cat but to attack; no matter how strong cornering cat is. We are all becoming more alike thanks to faster trade routes and the speed of information exchange which now occurs in the blink of an eye. The writer of these lines has traveled to almost all the shipping nations and has witnessed that all agoras (now shopping malls) are almost the same with the same style, brands and objects of desire. We know them, want them and cannot live without them anymore. Our lifestyles are almost the same. The world has already become one small ship. So we must stop allowing attention-seeking-leaders to decide what to do in their own way — which in consequence leads to the boat receiving damage– and begin to follow sound judgement and good sense bearing in mind future generations.

As rightly said by Ataturk, our nation’s founding father: “Peace at home, peace in the world!”

N.B.: So enough of philosophy, don’t forget to ask your brokers to include a general average absorption clause in your hull policies and make sure the upper limit is at minimum USD 250,000 with no additional premium. But of course, the limit depends on type of the ship and nature of trade you have.

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