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How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

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Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#61

Post by wat10000 »

DrewADesign wrote: post #37
mike_hearn wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quality issues are inevitable if the unions see their role as preventing anyone from getting fired.

Which, it should be noted, is not a common goal among unions. I’m a union metalworker in the US shipbuilding industry— our products are expensive, but in very high demand domestically and internationally. That’s true for various reasons, but in no small part because our quality is exceptional, and people regularly get fired for compromising it. Some unions do seem to strive to protect incompetence at all costs, but n…

A union is functionally a business which sells labor. It's usually structured so that sales are indirect, with their customers paying the workers directly, but that's just accounting.

There's no fundamental reason that a union should seek to prevent anyone from ever getting fired, anymore than any other business would see to prevent any of their employees from being fired. Likewise, there's no fundamental reason that unions should be bad for the businesses that hire their members. A prosperous client is good for business.

Some unions are badly run and hurt themselves. Americans especially tend to assume all unions are this way, partly because of some high-profile examples, partly because of a culture of individualism and association of unions with communism, and partly because of propaganda. But they definitely do not have to be like that.

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#62

Post by chairmansteve »

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 root cause in most industries is the same, there were just too many Labour supporters and the unions got too strong".

That's the conventional wisdom, but is it true?

It was the Thatcher government that shut down those industries. Maybe they didn't need to. There was a lot of collateral damage, privately owned suppliers that went bankrupt etc. A lot of countries have state subsidised industries, including the USA. GM was bailed out by the Obama government. Boeing and Tesla and SpaceX get tons of government money..

There is an interesting book by Tim Lankester, who was the chief economist in the Thatcher government. He has mixed feelings.

If you are interested, the book is:

Inside Thatcher's Monetarist Experiment by Tim Lankester

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#63

Post by alricb »

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…

Erm, British management is also famously terrible.

Coal has horrible externalities and its demise is a good thing.

British iron ore is not very rich, and it never was; Britain has imported iron ore since the 19th century. Given how cheap it is to ship iron by sea, it's very hard to justify using low-grade ore that has to be moved by rail.

Because of the large size of the manufacturers, a medium-size country will only have a couple of them, leaving it vulnerable to mismanagement like what happened at British Leyland, AMC, Chrysler, Nissan, ...

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#64

Post by Barrin92 »

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…

>Right now, we're very far from Autarky and we're far too close to total dependency.

The biggest problem with this thinking is that nationally mandated production is fundamentally unable to reduce dependency because national economic policy cannot increase aggregate output. That's to say when you politically prioritize to build ships the question always is what you aren't building instead, because all allocation consists of trade-offs.

Britain does not have a gigantic army of reserve labour to deploy that's doing nothing. It's a relatively small country compared to its competitors (as is Australia), it has limited capital. To recuperate the costs of a large industry in particular you need to be internationally competitive to export at scale. Is that even achievable and worth it at the cost of any other place you could put that capital?

It's actually worrying me quite a bit that people seem to have completely forgotten what a comparative advantage is. Free trade is good because it gets you more stuff, autarky does not necessarily diminish your dependence because you're necessarily getting less. North Korea is very autark and still dependent because it's also poor.

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#65

Post by jay_kyburz »

eru wrote: post #43
jay_kyburz wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Yeah, whenever I post a comment you can just prepend "In my humble opinion.."

Perhaps more interestingly, as a younger person, I felt very differently.

I used to think that military spending was very wasteful. I was ashamed of our countries involvement in the invasion of other countries without UN approval. I had assumed the world was more civilized and peaceful that it was before nukes.

We have free trade all over the world now! Our governments seemed to be actively dismantling manufacturing - the information economy was the future for us.

Now the world descends into chaos, and it will be very slow and expensive to restart those heavy industries.

But actually, I don't really know how expensive it will be to get things started again. Perhaps we can skip tanks and planes and jump right to weaponized satellites and autonomous drones.

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#66

Post by protocolture »

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…

Australias Unofficial naval strategy is "bomb the shit out of scary boats with Growlers".

Australias Official naval strategy is "We need more boats for reasons (cough asylum seekers cough), definitely not because it is politically expedient to keep boat builders employed"

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#67

Post by chairmansteve »

porknubbins wrote: post #46
jacquesm wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 reas…

There are lots of manufacturers in the UK right now who have fantastic quality. Rolls Royce aero engines. Lots of pharmaceuticals. Airbus wings and landing gear. Lots of cars as well. Medical devices. The list is endless.

The UK manufacturing sector was worth $279 billion in the last year.

https://www.makeuk.org/insights/reports/uk-manufacturing-fac...

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#68

Post by jltsiren »

yanhangyhy wrote: post #52
jltsiren wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> How could Shenzhen possibly compete with the rest of the world in electronics? Because Shenzhen has access to the entire talent pool and supply chain and the consume market of China to support its development.

There is nothing preventing the UK from taking advantage of the talent pool, supply chain, and consumer market of an equally large economy in their chosen field. Except maybe the UK itself.

National borders are as important as you choose to make them. Small countries have always relied on diplomacy and trade to be successful. The UK just needs to accept that it's one small country among many, and start acting accordingly.

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#69

Post by protocolture »

jay_kyburz wrote: post #65
eru wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who are you to decide these priorities for other people? Don't we have democracy, so that people can make their own choices?

Yeah, whenever I post a comment you can just prepend "In my humble opinion.." Perhaps more interestingly, as a younger person, I felt very differently. I used to think that military spending was very wasteful. I was ashamed of our countries involvement in the invasion of other countries without UN approval. I had assumed the world was more civilized and peaceful that it was before nukes. We have free trade all over t…

>Perhaps we can skip tanks and planes and jump right to weaponized satellites and autonomous drones.

I saw a whitepaper that suggested Australia should give up shipbuilding in exchange for drones and electronic warfare. The goal being to present a front like Ukraine does. Bristle with weapons and guarantee that any invasion would be 10 times more costly than anything gained. It was interesting at least.

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#70

Post by protocolture »

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.

As long as the British people suffer, who am I to judge who built the boats.
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