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How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

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Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#91

Post by imtringued »

Barrin92 wrote: post #64
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 con…

>It's actually worrying me quite a bit that people seem to have completely forgotten what a comparative advantage is.

A comparative advantage is a past fixed cost investment whose output has not been consumed in its entirety. Hence comparative advantages are created outcomes and not something you can follow.

The reason why a competing nation doesn't build their own industry is that they would have to duplicate the fixed costs of initially starting the industry and it is cheaper to pay only for the ships you need. If the government made the investment anyway, it would now have given its economic potential a concrete form and switching to a different form is expensive. Producing a different commodity requires paying fixed costs again. hnwnce, after the investment there is a comparative advantage to produce commodities whose fixed costs are already paid for. They are literally cheaper to produce than other commodities.

Meanwhile if you were to go to the other extreme. What if there was an activity without any fixed costs? The concept of comparative advantage would be meaningless, because switching tasks costs nothing.

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#92

Post by Vespasian »

calvinmorrison wrote: post #30
jacquesm wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

For an Island that has been dependent importing most goods for hundreds of years... I don't even think there's much of a merchant marine fleet left in the UK.

Interesting question. Its plausible that there are not many vessels that are UK flagged anymore.

The more interesting question is how many of these are under "control"/influence of domestic operators

If required, a flag can be exchanged in a pinch and tax codes /regulations can be adapted to allow/encourage this.

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#93

Post by Yokolos »

Barrin92 wrote: post #64
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 con…

It's worrying to me that the idea of comparative advantage has become such common parlance among non-economists that it's being used to justify everything without any real analysis or justification. It's not a solution for everything and it's not always applicable or relevant. Free trade is good, sure, but that's not the discussion here. It's not about free trade vs no free trade. Nobody posed that question here, so why are you bringing it up as if it's relevant?

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#94

Post by XorNot »

jack_tripper wrote: post #90
rhubarbtree wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We may add to that - the UK’s nuclear deterrent is onboard submarines.

That's also my thinking that nullifies a lot of the discussion here. Like why would anyone start a naval beef with the UK, given the UK's nuclear submarine fleet?

It's not about starting a direct conflict, it's that blockading it can be done at a distance rather easily.

If ships can't get to the UK, or the foreign shipyards reduced to rubble - or outbid - then it's more effective and cost efficient then any direct kinetic action.

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#96

Post by [deleted] »

vatsachak wrote: post #48
Incipient wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

[deleted]

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#97

Post by michaelt »

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.

If shipbuilding is a strategic national industry, doesn't that also make all the inputs to a shipyard strategic industries?

After all, if a war broke out and our normal trading partners weren't willing to sell us ships, presumably they wouldn't sell us steel or engines or ball bearings or paint or radar modules or computer chips or plastics.

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#98

Post by rusk »

jack_tripper wrote: post #90
rhubarbtree wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We may add to that - the UK’s nuclear deterrent is onboard submarines.

That's also my thinking that nullifies a lot of the discussion here. Like why would anyone start a naval beef with the UK, given the UK's nuclear submarine fleet?

Nukes are useless as anything other than a self destruct mechanism. A gunman pointing at your head with himself in the line of fire.

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#99

Post by XorNot »

jay_kyburz wrote: post #76
protocolture wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Yeah, so much drama around the gigantic submarines, we should be building water drones of some kind.

We literally are: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_Shark_(submarine)

But they don't do everything, and frankly drones are very overstated: they're not magic, and the idea of fielding masses of things when your adversary is at least China backed is pretty farcical: we can't ever win a conflict on cheap mass production because we don't have it.

So a handful of hard hitting long range weapons is going to be a key part of the strategy: because if we can't hit the factories, we can't win period.

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#100

Post by tonyedgecombe »

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…

>without London, the UK really would be quite doomed.

London would be considerably poorer, there is an argument that the rest of the country may well be better off. The finance sector is our equivalent to the oil industry in Dutch Disease.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_disease

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