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UK's hardware talent is being wasted

josef.cn

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Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#31
post #12

A lot of these complaints are not about an industry, but about late stage capitalism. About a failing society that privileges profits over social progress and material productivity because oligarchs and aristocracy own the institutions and are running this thing into the ground on base class instinct. All these cool "save the world" school projects exist because the current people running the world are deciding what…

Yeah, yeah, the meme copy-paste problem diagnosis, but what’s the solution? Rebuild into socialism? Rebuild into communism? Reset into early stage capitalism (lack of regulation and all)? How do you know that those systems won’t also have their own late stage failure? Case in point, the NHS right now. (Edit, posting too fast: To the person below who suggested 90% tax rates; the US never had those rates. On paper they…

Cracking down on monopolies and rentierism would be a good start. Followed by tying pension rises to worker's salaries. None of that is actually going to happen because of who votes combined with a government that's scared of its own shadow.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#32
post #2

[flagged]

> on an unjustified 125k.

Irrespective of your self perception of value, I am not sure you are fully grasping the disconnect between the growth in cost of living and the (lack of) growth in wages of the past 50 years for the average human in western economies.

By many standards we actually need that 125k just to live what we would consider a middle class life in the 1980's.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#33
post #12

A lot of these complaints are not about an industry, but about late stage capitalism. About a failing society that privileges profits over social progress and material productivity because oligarchs and aristocracy own the institutions and are running this thing into the ground on base class instinct. All these cool "save the world" school projects exist because the current people running the world are deciding what…

Yeah, yeah, the meme copy-paste problem diagnosis, but what’s the solution? Rebuild into socialism? Rebuild into communism? Reset into early stage capitalism (lack of regulation and all)? How do you know that those systems won’t also have their own late stage failure? Case in point, the NHS right now. (Edit, posting too fast: To the person below who suggested 90% tax rates; the US never had those rates. On paper they…

In the case of the UK the solution in effect since the mid 2010s is increase taxation, replace the natives completely with someone more desperate, and suppress wages.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#34
post #26

Fully agree on all except this point: > "UK's small market limits growth." (followed by a list of companies founded before we put up trade barriers with our largest and closest single market)

Not that I disagree that Brexit was an awful idea, but this was a problem even before Brexit. The reach of European companies just isn't what it used to be in the face of American and Chinese giants, and the EU is failing to be a truly single market where companies can grow to that scale.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#35
post #12

A lot of these complaints are not about an industry, but about late stage capitalism. About a failing society that privileges profits over social progress and material productivity because oligarchs and aristocracy own the institutions and are running this thing into the ground on base class instinct. All these cool "save the world" school projects exist because the current people running the world are deciding what…

Government spending is 45% of GDP.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#36
The UK as a society doesn’t care about anything related to industrial production because it is ideologically opposed to anything resembling an industrial working class.

Skilled jobs are anathema to the ethos of the people in charge of the UK’s industrial policy - who have never held a skilled job in their life - as they would prefer everyone to be a backbiting, striving social climber like them, either moving money around of gumming up the system with endless bureaucracy.

This trend is exhibited in many of the ‘developed’ economies but it is particularly strong in the UK, a country fooling itself with delusions of grandeur while, like Wilde’s picture, its foundations gnarl and ossify and crumble, like dust into the dustpan of history. Next…

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#37
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, yeah, the meme copy-paste problem diagnosis, but what’s the solution? Rebuild into socialism? Rebuild into communism? Reset into early stage capitalism (lack of regulation and all)? How do you know that those systems won’t also have their own late stage failure? Case in point, the NHS right now. (Edit, posting too fast: To the person below who suggested 90% tax rates; the US never had those rates. On paper they…

Cracking down on monopolies and rentierism would be a good start. Followed by tying pension rises to worker's salaries. None of that is actually going to happen because of who votes combined with a government that's scared of its own shadow.

Combined with the fact that those solutions just listed are short term and a surefire way to ensure nobody gets a pension.

You also can’t act against monopolies when China happily won’t act against their own state owned monopolies, which are in an arm’s race trying to surpass us. Falling behind to China is a great way to cause a tech investment collapse.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#38
post #12

A lot of these complaints are not about an industry, but about late stage capitalism. About a failing society that privileges profits over social progress and material productivity because oligarchs and aristocracy own the institutions and are running this thing into the ground on base class instinct. All these cool "save the world" school projects exist because the current people running the world are deciding what…

Yeah, yeah, the meme copy-paste problem diagnosis, but what’s the solution? Rebuild into socialism? Rebuild into communism? Reset into early stage capitalism (lack of regulation and all)? How do you know that those systems won’t also have their own late stage failure? Case in point, the NHS right now. (Edit, posting too fast: To the person below who suggested 90% tax rates; the US never had those rates. On paper they…

The NHS is not dying an entirely natural death. Murder most foul.

Your question is coupling a matter of our policy preference, our tactical planning to arrive at that preference, and a hypothetical predictive model. If like some supervillain I had come up with a satisfactory answer to all those questions I would have enacted it twenty minutes ago.

Re: UK's hardware talent is being wasted

#40

This is spot on. All the smart and ambitious people I know who studied (non-software) Engineering at university in the UK have ended up going into software engineering via self-teaching or finance/consulting because the only hardware engineering career paths seem to be working for Rolls Royce in the middle of nowhere with terrible pay, or alternatively working at Jaguar Land Rover in the middle of nowhere with terrib…

Preach. My friend is a gifted passionate Aerospace engineer (top in his specific stream at Cambridge) and basically is withering away working for the above 2 firms. The location is grim being far from others and generally far from other young exciting people. Additionally in his org, there just isn't a sense of excitement/ urgency which leaves him with little to do. Prioritising career for a career that's not there

Whilst others working in software (myself included) can have a far greater quality of life and salary working in London.

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