How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry • Hacker News Board

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#41

Post by jltsiren » Mon, Nov 10, 2025, 3:32 AM UTC

webdevver wrote: post #6

yanhangyhy wrote: post #4

This is called mean reversion in history. The UK and Japan are small island countries. They lack the resources and manpower to sustain long-term industrial prosperity. Everything they have is temporary. In the end these industries flow to large nations with vast resources and large pools of technical talent. It used to be the United States. Now it is China absorbing Japan and Korea. This applies not only to shipbuild…

ive long held this take aswell. a lot of people point back at history, with the argument of "we did it before, we can do it now!" but whats to say it wasn't a transient? transients can last 1 year or 100 years, but in the latter case i think its 'hard' for us to believe that it was a fluke, because we view transients that last longer than a human lifespan with a bias of perceived permanence. how could the UK ever com…

How could Shenzhen possibly compete with the rest of the world in electronics?

Specialization is the answer. The bigger you are, the more fields you can be competitive in. But even regions much smaller than the UK can be world leaders in something, if they choose to prioritize that and play their cards right.

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#42

Post by eru » Mon, Nov 10, 2025, 3:32 AM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #11

ggm wrote: post #2

The best time to try and fix this is 20 or 30 years ago, but absent a time machine, the next best time is now. Either you feel this kind of construction process is national-strategic and you ignore the cost over imports, or not. If you don't regard this as a core competency which should be kept in the national register, then sure, buy the ships from other places. But, don't come whining when the national-strategic in…

For a country that is an Island you'd think that the question of whether or not it is 'national-strategic' would have been answered in the affirmative.

Why? Singapore is an island, too, and we don't need a national-strategic ship building industry.

As long as your friends build ships, you are fine.

The UK is friends with South Korea, for example.

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#43

Post by eru » Mon, Nov 10, 2025, 3:33 AM UTC

jay_kyburz wrote: post #40

ggm wrote: post #2

The best time to try and fix this is 20 or 30 years ago, but absent a time machine, the next best time is now. Either you feel this kind of construction process is national-strategic and you ignore the cost over imports, or not. If you don't regard this as a core competency which should be kept in the national register, then sure, buy the ships from other places. But, don't come whining when the national-strategic in…

Every country should be able to defend itself, without reliance on allies, as a national priority. If this means building cars, ships, tanks, and planes, then that infrastructure should be built and maintained at taxpayers expense. Whats more, you need to have market forces within your own country so competition can deliver you the best products. You can't just fund one ship building company, you need to roll the dic…

Who are you to decide these priorities for other people?

Don't we have democracy, so that people can make their own choices?

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#44

Post by nextworddev » Mon, Nov 10, 2025, 3:33 AM UTC

wagwang wrote: post #35

Can't wait for the battle of the Thames river between the British North Sea fleet (purchased from China) against the imperial Russian fleet (also purchased from China) On a more serious note, the problem with centering your economy on international finance is that it's only lucrative if no one else in the world has capital and access to worldwide industry.

Good thing that Japanese and South Korean shipbuilding industries exist

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#45

Post by hypeatei » Mon, Nov 10, 2025, 3:34 AM UTC

ggm wrote: post #2

The best time to try and fix this is 20 or 30 years ago, but absent a time machine, the next best time is now. Either you feel this kind of construction process is national-strategic and you ignore the cost over imports, or not. If you don't regard this as a core competency which should be kept in the national register, then sure, buy the ships from other places. But, don't come whining when the national-strategic in…

I'm of the opinion that things like shipbuilding don't really matter in times of war for countries with nuclear weapons. There would be dire consequences for anyone invading and/or blockading a nuclear armed country.

A lot of people seem to yearn for the "good old days" where we built giant, tangible things that did cool stuff. That's fine, but the "national security" arguments ring hollow as you're basically saying all institutions, intelligence agencies, defense agencies, etc. are asleep at the wheel if it truly is a threat... which I guess is possible but highly unlikely.

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#46

Post by porknubbins » Mon, Nov 10, 2025, 3:34 AM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #15

mike_hearn wrote: post #5

It's a good analysis but probably over-fixates on shipping specific factors. The UK also lost its car industry, its steel industry etc. The root cause in most industries is the same, there were just too many Labour supporters and the unions got too strong as a result. From the comments: > I can relate to British union rules being head-bangingly stupid. In the mid-1970's I worked on the night shift as a spot-welder on…

The main reason the car industry couldn't hack it is because of quality issues. There was this joke sticker for the back of your Jaguar or Rolls: "The parts falling off this car are of the very finest British manufacture". I worked a lot on classic Mini's, Metros and Maxi's. The degree to which body work had been patched and bent to match it to the corresponding chassis was quite amazing. Rumor had it the Leyland fac…

Cars like Jaguar and Land Rover have famously bad electrical systems. But just saying quality issues doesn’t really get to the heart of the issue. Bad quality at one company is one thing, but if you’re arguing bad quality happened across a whole industry or country, and its the country that started the industrial revolution and could come up with the Rolls Royce Merlin when it needed to, there has to be a deeper reason. I don’t know it unions were the whole story, as really only Germany or Germanic countries have ever had great quality control for cars in Europe, but there must be some systemic reason.

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#47

Post by sefrost » Mon, Nov 10, 2025, 3:35 AM UTC

colesantiago wrote: post #31

If we zoom out a bit the UK is a failed country. All the industries in the UK are on the decline and most UK companies are being either sold off, shut down or are being owned (for a long time) by foreign companies. It may take several decades for the UK to come back from this.

The economic situation in the UK has become bizarre.

I would recommend interested HNers to read up on the State Pension Triple Lock; and the various income tax cliff edges as some key examples.

With respect to the income tax, it is possible for higher earning (not by US standards) employees to receive a bonus and actually take home less money than before they received the bonus.

The triple lock is a politically motivated policy which always grows the state pension (given to essentially all UK citizens and anybody that ever worked there for more than 3 years) at a rate faster than earnings grow or faster than the economy grows. It will subsume the entire government budget.

Given the extremely high cost of energy, and housing in many places, younger people also seem to be opting out entirely. Disability payments the government pays are increasing at a rapid rate. (1 in 13 of the population are currently receiving this benefit).

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#48

Post by vatsachak » Mon, Nov 10, 2025, 3:35 AM UTC

Incipient wrote: post #26

vatsachak wrote: post #3

"As other countries expanded their output, adopted modern production methods, and built new, efficient shipyards, British shipbuilders found themselves increasingly uncompetitive." This feels like the US with longshoremen and coal

I do feel the cost of labour is DRASTICALLY understated. Even today, Asian shipyards have people crawling all over them. My last job, in oil and gas, on a large offshore vessel had I think 4000 people engaged in the shipyard during construction.

Even then, living costs in the US are quite bloated due to over-regulation

Labor in the US is extremely pricey because you have to keep the landlords happy

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#49

Post by dluan » Mon, Nov 10, 2025, 3:37 AM UTC

I love how the capitalist laws of markets that instigated the rise of China as a the main ship builder - cheaper labor, automated production, low cost of all the source materials also coming from China - don't seem to apply for the people making the argument of protectional national strategic industries.

This is no different than any other industry. Unless you are on the cutting edge of a product where innovation is still being pushed, then your industry is going to be eaten up by China.

The UK at its peak was producing 1.4M in ship tonnage, now it produces zero. The US currently produces 69k in ship tonnage. China produces 37M in ship tonnage. Even if you can scale back to the historic peak, it's nowhere near enough. The difference between zero produced ships a year and 3 per year or 30 per year may as well be zero when China is producing 3 per day. It's over.

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#50

Post by fuoqi » Mon, Nov 10, 2025, 3:37 AM UTC

See this video on the economics of shipbuilding: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Gk61ginOqo

Assembly of civilian merchant ships is a notoriously low-margin industry (as opposed to manufacturing of engines/propellers/control systems). You could heavily subsidize it (by protectionism measures and/or by juicing up your Navy) like the US does in the name of strategic importance, but be prepared to pay heavily for it. If you want to preserve shipbuilding capabilities for military reasons, then chasing after the Asian shipbuilding countries may not be the most efficient way of achieving this, i.e. it may be better to just invest into building of military ships and manufacturing of higher-margin components without bothering with the low-margin assembly stuff.