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To build ships that break ice, U.S. must relearn to cut steel

wsj.com

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Re: To build ships that break ice, U.S. must relearn to cut steel

#101

Post by freefaler »

0xDEF wrote: post #91
cpursley wrote: post #64

Everybody likes to dump on Russia here but their nuclear icebreakers are something to behold: https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2022/may/worlds-m... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKaVhXn49xY

It is actually a surprising that Russia is not the manufacturing capital of the world. They have super-cheap energy, Soviet-era high-quality STEM education, and 50 million cheap workers from Caucasus, Siberia, Far East Russia, and the Central Asian countries.

And a very corrupted government and no rule of law. China is also corrupted, but the level of corruption in Russia is on a different level.

Also declining population and worsening education.

There is a statistically significant correlation between the level of corruption and economic growth:

https://documents.worldbank.org/en/publication/documents-rep...

Putin has dismantled most of the check and balances in the system. Nobody would invest in that country. Check Bill Browder's story on how they raided the Hermitage fund.

And with this useless war going on they're forced to buy arms from DPRK.

Re: To build ships that break ice, U.S. must relearn to cut steel

#102

Post by [deleted] »

mschuster91 wrote: post #55
appleiigs wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The U.S. doesn't have a centrally planned economy. Each business is free to do as it wishes... and if they wished to survive competitively, they moved their production offshore (helps avoid UAW strikes). Easy to know U.S. lost expertise, but tough question how do you get it back? Tariffs? A larger military-industrial complex? Even larger government?

> The U.S. doesn't have a centrally planned economy. You don't need a centrally planned economy. Subsidies are enough incentive to at least keep a bit of production around. > Easy to know U.S. lost expertise, but tough question how do you get it back? Invest money into subsidies / R&D like in the icebreaker case, or raise tariffs against Chinese and Indian price dumping.

[deleted]

Re: To build ships that break ice, U.S. must relearn to cut steel

#103

Post by bluGill »

dragonwriter wrote: post #83
toss1 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, the who would you suggest should be the world's police? The post-WWII world order is predicated on the agreement that the age of imperialism is over and that invasion by force to annex another country is illegitimate. It is obvious that all nations do not agree to this. E.g.: China on Tibet, Taiwan, 9-dashed line, etc., Russia in Chechnya, Georgia, Ukraine. Those authoritarian states think it is perfectly fine to…

> OK, the who would you suggest should be the world’s police? > The post-WWII world order is predicated on the agreement that the age of imperialism is over and that invasion by force to annex another country is illegitimate. If that was true, it would be inconsistent with any one nation or narrow relatively fixed set of nations being the world’s police, as that would indicate that the age of imperialism was not over…

The age of imperialism is not over, except where someone enforces it. That someone is mostly the US, but UK and France also do a lot of work that I know of. None of them are perfect, all have a lot of blood on their hands, but overall imperialism is mostly dead despite many who would turn to it if they could.

In economic theory there are good reasons to say that every country has better options than imperialism - but imperialism often looks easy.

Re: To build ships that break ice, U.S. must relearn to cut steel

#104

Post by ClumsyPilot »

throwbadubadu wrote: post #77
appleiigs wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or maybe this is bad news, because the youth do not realize what is at stake. After all the article is talking about skills that we have lost relative to other countries which may not like the U.S. very much.

Was not referring to the article but apparently to the oil industry specifics the article also doesn't talk about, and try to see everything negative just with a bit of optimism ;) Thus, you cannot just repeat "bad news" unfair :( Bring a new perspective please. (And feel free to downvote, yeees I know we need some oil industry.. but no, if we'd do it right still not as much as >95% of it is right now for.. no way ar…

The idea that new skills just magically materialise on demand is increadibly dangerous.

It reeks of disrespect for the commitment it takes to nurture an industry, and is why in the west prodictoce 8ndustries are ocershadowed by asset bubles and speculation

Re: To build ships that break ice, U.S. must relearn to cut steel

#105

Post by Tangurena2 »

HankB99 wrote: post #29

Two articles now I try to access the content at archive.ph and cannot make it past the Captcha. I've disabled uBlock Origin and that seems to make no difference. Is anyone else seeing this and if so, have a solution? (Firefox 117.0.1 (64-bit) on Debian Linux.)

Archive.ph has trouble from time-to-time. Give it a couple hours and someone will "reboot the hamster".

Re: To build ships that break ice, U.S. must relearn to cut steel

#106

Post by 1970-01-01 »

moonchrome wrote: post #47
1970-01-01 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the skills that are lost. The knowledge is safe in print.

There's a lot of practical/contextual knowledge that isn't documented, and what's documented isn't guaranteed to be correct or can be misleading (terminology changes, standards change, some things are implied because they are obvious at the time, etc.)

Give some examples? That kind of 'undocumented' knowledge is lost because better tech has completely replaced it. I'm talking about inventions like the Spinning Mule or the steam engine. We have superseded them with electric motors and logic boards.

Re: To build ships that break ice, U.S. must relearn to cut steel

#107

Post by dxbydt »

horeszko wrote: post #28

Makes me wonder how much manufacturing knowledge has been lost in the west, and how long it might take to rediscover it all. Does anyone know of any good sources on this?

https://www.businessinsider.com/basic-products-america-doesn...

Dated article, says USA doesn't make these anymore -

Baseball Babyfood Etch a Sketch Converse Shoes Stainless Steel Rebar Dress Shirt Mattel Toys Minivan Vending Machine Levi Jeans Red Wagon TV Cellphone Railroad Turnouts Sardines Dell Computer Cutlery Bulb

Re: To build ships that break ice, U.S. must relearn to cut steel

#108

Post by bluGill »

notamy wrote: post #68
ahi wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a huge need, really just Alaska and the Great Lakes. For geostrategic purposes, our friends to the north have something like 20 including a couple heavies.

Interesting. I would have thought that the Great Lakes would be important to keep cleared and necessitate more than 1-2.

Weather on the great lakes in winter is generally bad enough that shipping shuts down first. There have been a lot of shipwrecks on the great lakes - much more than the oceans, even though a lot more ships cross the ocean.

Re: To build ships that break ice, U.S. must relearn to cut steel

#109

Post by ClumsyPilot »

1970-01-01 wrote: post #33
horeszko wrote: post #28

Makes me wonder how much manufacturing knowledge has been lost in the west, and how long it might take to rediscover it all. Does anyone know of any good sources on this?

It's the skills that are lost. The knowledge is safe in print.

You can't even document computer code accurately. And neither can I.

Gordon Ramsey can't document how to cook a steak and how to tell thats its done. 3 different cooks will read his instructions and will end up with 3 different steaks.

The idea that a lifetime of steelworking experience can be foind in books, especially by people who aren't known for love of books, is pure folly.

Skills are living. They live in flesh and bone.

Re: To build ships that break ice, U.S. must relearn to cut steel

#110

Post by bhelkey »

dxbydt wrote: post #107
horeszko wrote: post #28

Makes me wonder how much manufacturing knowledge has been lost in the west, and how long it might take to rediscover it all. Does anyone know of any good sources on this?

https://www.businessinsider.com/basic-products-america-doesn... Dated article, says USA doesn't make these anymore - Baseball Babyfood Etch a Sketch Converse Shoes Stainless Steel Rebar Dress Shirt Mattel Toys Minivan Vending Machine Levi Jeans Red Wagon TV Cellphone Railroad Turnouts Sardines Dell Computer Cutlery Bulb

I can't speak to many of these. However, some baby food is made in the US.

https://www.fda.gov/safety/recalls-market-withdrawals-safety...

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