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How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

construction-physics.com

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Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#121

Post by rapsey »

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…

That is simply not true. UK and Japan are big enough to compete in specific sectors. The problem is the entire world gifted China their manufacturing ability and then gave up. Climate policy, short term economic thinking and unions all worked together to destroy the west manufacturing capability.

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#122

Post by blitzar »

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.

The cost of labour is DRASTICALLY overstated (except when it comes to executive pay then its apparently good value for money?), and the push/obsession with supernormal profits is DRASTICALLY understated.

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#123

Post by hexbin010 »

jacquesm wrote: post #17
webdevver wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 the UK ever compete with China, or the US, or India, on industry? How could Switzerland? How could Japan? How could the Netherlands? And so on... The UK is still pretty good at plenty of things, but they lacked a specific USP. I think their biggest issues (from an industry perspective) were not so much scale as quality control and the willingness to improve their processes. Compare a German car from the 1…

German cars are a bit of joke these days in terms of reliability but their legacy and brand image is still keeping them afloat.

https://www.consumerreports.org/cars/used-car-brand-reliabil...

https://www.vibilagare.se/public/documents/2011/09/maskinska...

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#124

Post by coldtea »

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…

>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.

Sometimes the time to fix a thing in general (nevermind the "best time") has come and gone, and the rest is wishful thinking and platitudes like "the next best time is now".

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#125

Post by moomin »

michaelt wrote: post #97
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.

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.

They is doing a lot of heavy lifting here, unless you believe we buy steel from the same places we buy ships.

The real answer to this is threat analysis: what are the realistic scenarios under which it becomes a problem. e.g. if Japan stops supplying ships a) how likely is that and b) could we just buy them from the Dutch instead? However, the stakes for getting this wrong are high.

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#126

Post by EdwardDiego »

rapsey wrote: post #104
mmooss wrote: post #57

There's a presumption that it would be beneficial to return mid-20th century manufacturing economies. If you look at economic output and productivity, and quality of life for labor (physical labor, especially repetitive physical labor, is hard to do for decades), we want to move forward and we did. We want to plan for a mid-21st century economy. The problem is a small group seizing the benefits for themselves.

This is economic myopia that leads to long term subservience to countries which have maintained manufacturing capability. China can literally bring the rest of the developed world to their knees at will with rare earths.

There's lots of rare earth deposits all over the world, but the question is, are you willing to accept the pollution that results from extracting them as efficiently as possible?

China's "If it develops a market, yes" answer to that is their strategic advantage.

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#127

Post by coldtea »

faichai wrote: post #115
givemeethekeys wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the people who have the most to lose don't think that something is in the national interest, then is it really?

"think" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence. Are the people really thinking? I don't think they are.

Those people are thinking just fine. With their wallets.

Why would they prioritize national interests? Because they were elected to do so?

After all they know they were actually elected because people were only given a couple of establishment approved choices, and in their naivety they happened to pick their side this time (after all they alternate between the two choices all the time).

They also know they'll be fine and have their salaries, extras, and nice corporate post-politic sinecures whetever their performance. Just see Blair.

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#128

Post by EdwardDiego »

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 today, Asian shipyards have people crawling all over them.

When you don't have a minimum wage, or your minimum wage is vastly lower than other competitors, it's far more efficient to hire more people than to invest in process improvements.

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#129

Post by coldtea »

xboxnolifes wrote: post #74
givemeethekeys wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the people who have the most to lose don't think that something is in the national interest, then is it really?

They're also the people with the most ability to jump ship should something happen.

aka zero skin in the game, and, worse, a lot to earn by doing favors and pushing for quick profits for their friends in the corporate and finance worlds

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#130

Post by EdwardDiego »

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…

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