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Why the U.S. can't build icebreaking ships

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Re: Why the U.S. can't build icebreaking ships

#311

Post by roenxi »

bluGill wrote: post #268
roenxi wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if they "doesn't" fight Russia now, why are they going to fight China in the future? Pretty good odds they won't because the cost is too high. What we appear to be seeing is they don't really have a lot of tools that can be used against an uncooperative nuclear-armed power; and many of those tools would probably fail against China.

Nobody wants to fight China because the cost is so high - we are talking about lives more than dollars here (though dollar cost is high too). What everyone worries about is being forced to fight China anyway. China is not playing nice with the US on the world stage. They are clearly supporting Russia over Ukraine (while pretending to be neutral). They are siding with Iran in the middle east. They are doing things in…

All those reasons apply to Russia too.

> but the US generally has supported democracy while China is fine with dictators

In the Middle East the US's #1 ally is indeed a democracy, but is currently fending off various challenges [1, 2] accusing them of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. Their #2 ally is an authoritarian regime run by a gentleman who can be identified with phrases like "the bone saw incident" let alone the Kingdom's long record of barbarism and human rights abuses.

The US might win a battle of who supports better causes, but it isn't a can of worms to open either. There is no particular indication that it cares about the government system or actions of the people it supports.

[0] If the US didn't do it directly, they endorsed it.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_genocide#International_Cr...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_genocide#International_Co...

Re: Why the U.S. can't build icebreaking ships

#312

Post by bluGill »

roenxi wrote: post #311
bluGill wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody wants to fight China because the cost is so high - we are talking about lives more than dollars here (though dollar cost is high too). What everyone worries about is being forced to fight China anyway. China is not playing nice with the US on the world stage. They are clearly supporting Russia over Ukraine (while pretending to be neutral). They are siding with Iran in the middle east. They are doing things in…

All those reasons apply to Russia too. > but the US generally has supported democracy while China is fine with dictators In the Middle East the US's #1 ally is indeed a democracy, but is currently fending off various challenges [1, 2] accusing them of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. Their #2 ally is an authoritarian regime run by a gentleman who can be identified with phrases like "the bone saw inci…

Every other option is even worse. Including walking away (they have too much oil so someone will control it)

Re: Why the U.S. can't build icebreaking ships

#313

Post by poincaredisk »

philwelch wrote: post #68
ben7799 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. I would conjecture that we have the same cultural issues at this point preventing us from building effective passenger rail systems.

The US doesn't have effective passenger rail systems for the same reason that Europe and Japan don't have effective freight rail systems: you have to optimize for one use case or the other or else have two completely separate systems, which takes up a lot of extra land.

>for the same reason that Europe and Japan don't have effective freight rail systems

...don't we? I'm not sure about the effectiveness or how to measure it, but I know that a lot of cargo - especially long distance cargo - travels by rail.

Re: Why the U.S. can't build icebreaking ships

#314

Post by poincaredisk »

chalcolithic wrote: post #255

Kind of pointless comparing Russian icebreaker number to anyone elses'. Russia is basically a huge pile of snow next to a huge floating pile of ice (geographically, not population-wise, but still). Nobody has even 10% of motivation for building icebreakers that Russia has.

You're probably right about the motivation, but

>Russia is basically a huge pile of snow

Russia is very diverse and it's a huge oversimplification to reduce it to the cold parts. Just like America is not just California, Russia is not just Siberia.

Re: Why the U.S. can't build icebreaking ships

#315

Post by ghnws »

fsckboy wrote: post #210
jahewson wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is it that the US ship builders aren't competent Yes, they are woefully uncompetitive. They produce single-digit numbers of commercial oceangoing ships annually, at 2-4x the cost of elsewhere. It’s an industry on life support.

> woefully uncompetitive. They produce single-digit numbers of commercial oceangoing ships annually, at 2-4x the cost of elsewhere unions and pro union legislation makes US shipbuilding uncompetitive. it also ruins US merchant marine. We could encourage it, but the world market is fairly competitive so we don't really need to, except for defense.

Ship building, like most other industries, is unionized in Finland and I would be surprised if it wasn't the same in Germany.

Re: Why the U.S. can't build icebreaking ships

#316

Post by mckravchyk »

nasaeclipse wrote: post #160

Honestly, with how quickly sea ice and glaciers are melting away, I don't think icebreakers will be something we would necessarily need in the near future.

> The need for icebreaking vessels will remain even as climate change reduces the extent of sea ice: paradoxically, as new polar routes become accessible and sea ice becomes more mobile, the demand for icebreakers is likely to increase.

Re: Why the U.S. can't build icebreaking ships

#317

Post by daveguy »

shiroiushi wrote: post #234
daveguy wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> $5000 for a couple to see a Swift show in the US now... That's just not true. As long as you are able to get an original ticket and not a resold one. But ticketmaster and live nation should be regulated because they're a middleman monopoly in all of it.

>That's just not true. According to the 1st paragraph of the linked article, it is. >As long as you are able to get an original ticket and not a resold one. That's pretty useless if they all get bought up by resellers.

It is literally false. The original tickets are nowhere close to that expensive and they do a lottery system with more verification now so that more fans get the tickets. I'm not defending Ticketmaster (they are awful and should be regulated), but original tickets just don't cost that much. Have you ever purchased Taylor Swift tickets? I have twice. Both times at original ticket prices.

Re: Why the U.S. can't build icebreaking ships

#318

Post by philwelch »

mmooss wrote: post #240
umbra07 wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China can't bomb American production unless we suffer absolutely catastrophic, unimaginable, WW3-escalatory levels of naval losses in the Pacific (because Chinese bombers from the Chinese mainland don't have the range to reach the American mainland).

I'm not sure that's true. The US can't defend an entire Pacific front, obviously, and has a shortage of ships, many of which will be busy doing other things. Anyway, I was thinking of missiles, which China has many of, and which can reach the US (including from submarines and other ships that can maneuver closer to the US).

There is close to zero escalation room between Chinese missile strikes on the US mainland and nuclear war. If we detect incoming missiles from China there’s a good chance the US assumes nuclear warheads and makes a retaliatory strike.

That’s a real risk, but because neither side of a conflict wants to actually escalate to a nuclear exchange, it is not very likely that China will launch missiles at the mainland US. (Likewise I think the US is unlikely to strike mainland China.)

Conversely, whichever side maintains naval superiority in the western Pacific Ocean can cut off any supply chains to and from Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, and mainland China itself, without the risk of nuclear escalation. And as I stated, this is the entire issue. If you control the seas of East Asia, you basically control the world.

Re: Why the U.S. can't build icebreaking ships

#319

Post by philwelch »

poincaredisk wrote: post #313
philwelch wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US doesn't have effective passenger rail systems for the same reason that Europe and Japan don't have effective freight rail systems: you have to optimize for one use case or the other or else have two completely separate systems, which takes up a lot of extra land.

>for the same reason that Europe and Japan don't have effective freight rail systems ...don't we? I'm not sure about the effectiveness or how to measure it, but I know that a lot of cargo - especially long distance cargo - travels by rail.

Europe has, by proportion, significantly more trucking and significantly less rail freight than the United States. Relatedly, the average American freight train is 2-3x longer than the maximum allowed length of a European freight train.

Re: Why the U.S. can't build icebreaking ships

#320

Post by bostik »

bruce511 wrote: post #301
bostik wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But the headline number is somewhat irrelevant. 300m sent to Finland is "gone forever". Even with the quotes, as a Finn I find this statement rather tasteless. Or would you also claim that cross-border trade with more nearby nations is "money gone forever"?

I didn't mean it to be tasteless, and it wasn't personal against Finland. My point was that "internal spending" and "external spending " are not (economically the same thing. Obviously, Finland wants to export - tests a given - but the price tag of a Finnish ship and a US ship are not the same unit.

No worries. From a national sovereignity perspective, I can see what you were trying to say. Especially with the growing international tensions, wanting to maintain an industrial and manufacturing base is a rational take.

FTR: I think that the CHIPS act is based on good intentions. US has identified advanced semiconductors as a strategic, critical base. Trying to in-shore the manufacturing and skills is clearly a desirable goal. But in case of something as niche and "bulky", ice-breakers feel more like they'd fall under comparative advantage.

You can look at China. They have had a persistent strategic goal to build up their advanced manufacturing base, and after sustaining that for >30 years, are now at the position where they can start to close off foreign suppliers. That shows roughly how long similar shift of balance could be expected to take if you wanted to counteract.

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