How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry • Hacker News Board

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#201

Post by actionfromafar » Mon, Nov 10, 2025, 10:18 AM UTC

jimbohn wrote: post #179

lm28469 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's almost as if Europe entirely gave up sometime in the 70s. People used to have vision for the next 50+ years, now they care about the next 3-5 years because they know they'll bounce to another position. That's why everything is seemingly slowly crumbling away (healthcare, industries, culture, education), we're putting bandaids here and there to maintain the illusion but I think everyone can tell the general trend

I think it's in part generational (a bunch of western countries have a quasi dead-locked democracy because boomers will vote whatever suits them short term, they will be dead when the bill comes anyway) and part due to the lack of accountability that democracy has brought to the upper echelon of society, or lack of skin in the game for the ruling class. Revolving doors, blatant corruption, and downright incompetence…

The upper class has none to little stake in society either, or so they seem to believe. I bet in practice, if the shit really hits the fan, it won't be so fun for them either. Other countries may also have problems at the same time.

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#202

Post by pjc50 » Mon, Nov 10, 2025, 10:21 AM UTC

KingTravis wrote: post #143

I've struggled to understand exactly why our productivity is so bad here and I feel that this really explains it quite well - over reliance in tried and tested methods coupled with a lack of capital investment - for example relying on push-carts in the yards rather than looking at whatever was a more automated approach. It's not necessarily a case of a "productivity puzzle" but rather a puzzle as to why business owne…

There's a book on this subject by someone I follow which I must get round to reading: https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-brompton/will-butler-ad...

It goes into a lot of detail on exactly how the process modernization happened in Brompton, with the sorts of challenges that you and the replies are talking about. The process and the workers need to adapt, in ways that the workers appreciate and fit the actual process of manufacture. Too often modernizations fail because they look at the "on paper" process, which isn't what the workers are actually doing.

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#203

Post by pjc50 » Mon, Nov 10, 2025, 10:24 AM UTC

exasperaited wrote: post #191

Neil44 wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ha, see what the unions have to say when you threaten the livelihoods of the poor downtrodden push card operatives, there will be placards and flaming braziers by the front gates before you can blink.

This frankly reads as somewhat sociopathic, not just anti-union. In 2025 I admire anyone brave enough to take this position: are you independently wealthy?

It's somewhat reasonable given the dire history of UK labour relations in the 1970s. As you say, it's now 2025 and the only people who can get away with that are maybe the train drivers. Everyone else has been casualized.

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#204

Post by gambiting » Mon, Nov 10, 2025, 10:26 AM UTC

dijit wrote: post #166

lm28469 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's almost as if Europe entirely gave up sometime in the 70s. People used to have vision for the next 50+ years, now they care about the next 3-5 years because they know they'll bounce to another position. That's why everything is seemingly slowly crumbling away (healthcare, industries, culture, education), we're putting bandaids here and there to maintain the illusion but I think everyone can tell the general trend

I always got the feeling as a child that I was growing up in the ruins of a once strong nation. I thought it was because my city (Coventry) was devastated after world-war-2 (the blitz: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coventry_Blitz ), the collapse of the British car industry (which, primarily affected Coventry) and then the closing of the coal mines leading to lower income tax money to the council for roads and things.…

>>I always got the feeling as a child that I was growing up in the ruins of a once strong nation

I live in the UK and not in London either, and it constantly feels like everything is just decaying and the country lives in the past not the present. Everything is just dilapidated, falling apart, or shut down. The streets are full of rubbish, dirty and local infrastructure doesn't get fixed up for months if someone damages it. Local councils are saying they will shut down care homes soon because there is no money for anything. And it's not even a private vs state funded issue - our local pharmacy literally looks like something out of afganistan, you walk in and there is actual dirty carpet on the floor, the shelves are 50% empty and there are several broken lights in the ceiling - with 4 people working behind the counter packing prescriptions. And that's operated by a private company! Which I believe is only doing it because they are required by an NHS contract, otherwise they would have shut the place down. And don't even get me started on the NHS - a friend with suicidal thoughts was told he needs to see a psychiatrist, the current wait time for one is 260 weeks(just short of 5 years). Honestly if I were cynical I'd say the system prefers if he kills himself, less of a burden.

Honestly, I feel so weird. One one hand, I work from home on a tech worker salary and I'm very comfortable financially - but I take a step out of my house and you don't feel like the 5th wealthiest nation in the world. Our local library had to be closed due to lack of funding recently. A library. What kind of 3rd world behaviour is that? And honestly I don't think even 3rd world countries are closing down libraries, it's just unthinkable.

I'm very jaded about it, I keep trying to find positives and there are some but generally I've learnt to expect that things are broken, forgotten or just in poor state in some way or another, because there is never any money to do anything. It's a poor country cosplaying as a superpower.

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#205

Post by avianlyric » Mon, Nov 10, 2025, 10:27 AM UTC

thorin wrote: post #138

Same reason it got out of every other industry. It wasn't short-term profitable. After the 70s at least everything began moving to the private sector and there was no strategic thinking. This completed in the 90s and there was no reason for anyone to think that semi-conductors, minerals, even oil and gas now shouldn't be bought from a friend rather than being produced internally.

Not quite the conclusions of the article. As it points out the UK nationalised its shipbuilding industry in the 70s in a last ditch effort to turn it around, and despite operating it at a significant loss for a decade failed to make it even slightly competitive. In the 90s the industry was then privatised again once it was clear there was no saving it anymore.

For the vast majority of its history the UK shipbuilding industry was completely private, and dominated by many small shipbuilders. Consolidation only started after the UK government stepped in to provide some kind of sensible strategy to improve the competitiveness of the industry, via government loans tied to longer term strategic goals to improve productivity.

Ultimately it seems that the UK shipbuilding industry was kill by the thing that once made it so dominant. It was a highly distributed, extremely flat, high skilled industry, with little to no management. It made it easy for the industry to rapidly grow and shrink, and made it extremely effective at producing bespoke products. But as the world moved towards standardisation, those strengths became weaknesses.

The lack of management structure made it impossible for the industry to properly recognise the issues, or effect change to fix the issues. And the world moved towards standardisation, which gave a huge advantage to shipbuilders that built up capital intensive infrastructure that allowed the use of lower skilled labour to produce standard design quick, cheaper, and to a higher quality, than the UK distributed, high skill, labour force.

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#206

Post by Panzer04 » Mon, Nov 10, 2025, 10:27 AM UTC

throwthrow0987 wrote: post #161

Barrin92 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

>comparative advantage Makes a lot of sense in textbooks. But in the real world, when politics is involved, the whole theory breaks down. What does your text book say about China holding rare earths hostage in regard of comparative advantage?

Someone else starts their own mines, everyone goes a little poorer.

except for oil, most countries aren't dependant on other countries just to survive in the near term (food is one of the few things countries will usually attempt to ensure they are selfsufficent in, if it's feasible)

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#207

Post by lm28469 » Mon, Nov 10, 2025, 10:30 AM UTC

inglor_cz wrote: post #162

lm28469 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's almost as if Europe entirely gave up sometime in the 70s. People used to have vision for the next 50+ years, now they care about the next 3-5 years because they know they'll bounce to another position. That's why everything is seemingly slowly crumbling away (healthcare, industries, culture, education), we're putting bandaids here and there to maintain the illusion but I think everyone can tell the general trend

" People used to have vision for the next 50+ years, now they care about the next 3-5 years " This sounds like a modern version of Golden Age nostalgia. First, I am not at all sure that people had longer visions; some probably did, but the entire nations? Not so sure. Second, there is a certain wisdom in accepting that you don't know how the world will look in 50+ years. 50 years ago, China was an extremely impoveris…

> This sounds like a modern version of Golden Age nostalgia.

When France built their nuclear programs, or railways, it was a massive investment, the people in charge when these decisions were taken were long gone by the time the projects were completed. It wasn't seen as a cost but as a national interest, now we're cutting everything down because everything is seen as a short term cost regardless of the long term benefits.

> I am not at all sure that people had longer visions; some probably did, but the entire nations? Not so sure.

Nations don't matter, the 10 or so people truly in charge do, when they have a spine at least, now that we have business men thinking about the next quarter it's more complicated.

> Second, there is a certain wisdom in accepting that you don't know how the world will look in 50+ years

History doesn't just happen... countries with long term visions make history, of course if you check out of the race you're at the mercy of whatever other people decide for you. China didn't automagically get where it is today, the planned economy helps in that regard.

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#208

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

lm28469 wrote: post #152

thorin wrote: post #138

Same reason it got out of every other industry. It wasn't short-term profitable. After the 70s at least everything began moving to the private sector and there was no strategic thinking. This completed in the 90s and there was no reason for anyone to think that semi-conductors, minerals, even oil and gas now shouldn't be bought from a friend rather than being produced internally.

It's almost as if Europe entirely gave up sometime in the 70s. People used to have vision for the next 50+ years, now they care about the next 3-5 years because they know they'll bounce to another position. That's why everything is seemingly slowly crumbling away (healthcare, industries, culture, education), we're putting bandaids here and there to maintain the illusion but I think everyone can tell the general trend

[dead]

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#209

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

ben_w wrote: post #180

lm28469 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's almost as if Europe entirely gave up sometime in the 70s. People used to have vision for the next 50+ years, now they care about the next 3-5 years because they know they'll bounce to another position. That's why everything is seemingly slowly crumbling away (healthcare, industries, culture, education), we're putting bandaids here and there to maintain the illusion but I think everyone can tell the general trend

Europe as a whole didn't give up in the 1970s, but the 1970s was famously bad for the UK. That said, I think this was more a case of when the rot in the UK became visible rather than when it started; the British government hasn't been competent for a very long time, and still isn't. With the caveat that I'm not a historian and have only an amateur knowledge of the events, I'd say the problems set in even before the p…

If you think the British Empire was ever competent then I strongly recommend you listen to the episodes of the Empire podcast that cover the British Empire (there’s a lot of different episodes across the series).

With the exception of the Royal Navy, the British Empire was spectacularly incompetent. It’s a running joke that the British stumbled into being the largest empire in history.

That said, I don’t think it’s unique to Britain. The Roman Empire has many tales of staggering incompetence and wild idiocy throughout its expansion. If you have the time, The History of Rome is an excellent podcast that covers the entire time period.

I suspect it’s the truth of human nature that it isn’t possible for such large organisations to be competent throughout, just by virtue of how many people they take to operate.

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#210

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

csomar wrote: post #165

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.

The US (and maybe the EU) are currently in the process of destroying their knowledge-based economy in the pursuit of dust manufacturing. The reason China is willing to negotiating with the US or the EU is because of massive leverages these countries have when it comes to the monopoly of the knowledge and information economy. If China could turn on a switch and become independent, they'd do it. They can't and it's int…

>The US (and maybe the EU) are currently in the process of destroying their knowledge-based economy in the pursuit of dust manufacturing. The reason China is willing to negotiating with the US or the EU is because of massive leverages these countries have when it comes to the monopoly of the knowledge and information economy.

Except that we don't have monopoly on that. Assembled in China, designed in California worked for a while because of the inertia of the previous times when the whole pyramid was located in the US. For a lot of stuff it mutated into designed in China, assembled in China.

Guess what - we moved the bottom layers of the industrial pyramid and we are acting surprised that the top layers are also organically happening there. We are probably somewhat ahead, but if we get wiped out of existence tomorrow the progress in China won't slow down.