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How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

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Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#371

Post by generic92034 »

varjag wrote: post #257
generic92034 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because he doesn't serve his people, they serve him. I am not convinced the current breed of politicians in (more or less) democratic countries sees that differently.

Right, it's sometimes hard to see the difference with democracy and authoritarianism if you never experienced the latter.

Oh, please do not assume I would not be able to see differences between democracy and authoritarianism. I only said I doubt that there are big differences between some of the views of the respective leaders regarding the populace.

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#372

Post by bad_haircut72 »

zdragnar wrote: post #368
jack_tripper wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't worry, this trend has been in reverse the past couple of years.

I don't know about the UK, but in the US this is only half true. Degree-requiring jobs still have better social status over trades and low/no skill work, at least from a "what do you want to be when you grow up" point of view. However, many more people than previously are skeptical of the math behind the cost of a college degree. Going into significant debt only to find a field flooded with others, competing with ove…

Theres simply no reason why college is as expensive as it is. The cynic in me says price increases are about setting up class boundaries and pushing people back into the necessary but less desirable factory/trade jobs of previous generations

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#373

Post by guywithahat »

parados wrote: post #332

Former UK manufacturing engineer here (1980s onwards). The manufacturing industry in the UK at that time suffered from three serious problems: - Low productivity workforce. There was a huge pool of skilled, low wage, workers that had little incentive (or will) to up-skill. There were few apprenticeship schemes or other education programs to train them for the modern world. - Poor quality management. "Working in trade…

[flagged]

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#374

Post by scott_w »

potato3732842 wrote: post #328
scott_w wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Either you feel this kind of construction process is national-strategic and you ignore the cost over imports, or not. So the simple truth is you can almost never "ignore the cost" because that cost must be borne somewhere. And there's always someone that's considered "national-strategic" by someone. Hell, I recall my dad being enraged that our "blue" passports are now manufactured in Poland under contract from a Fr…

Society can't ignore the cost. But the bad faith peddlers of the costs sure can. You can't go an hour without some HN comment just hand waving away the costs of some regulation, some additional labor overhead, some procedural change, some tweak of input sourcing or other reduction of outputs relative to inputs as being "amortized" over the course of whatever to much applause from the comment section. And yet these sa…

> You can't go an hour without some HN comment just hand waving away the costs of some regulation

I don't see what regulation has to do with (effectively) nationalising the entire shipbuilding industry. When I say "cost" I literally mean the financial cost to the Exchequer.

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#375

Post by dijit »

pjc50 wrote: post #365
dijit wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The highest value thing you can do in this life is produce food. The second highest value thing you can do is produce machines that help produce food (or other raw materials). The least value thing you can do is the services that are needed to support the production of machines that produce food. This is an uncomfortable thing to read for someone (such as myself) working in tech, in fact that's where the "sectors" co…

That rather implies a society of subsistence farmers is the "most valuable", which is the one thing everyone in every society runs away from as fast as possible when technology prevents economic alternatives.

just because people don’t wanna do it doesn’t mean it’s not important.

It’s interesting that we would care about monetary value more than societal value- that kind of leans into my point don’t you think?

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#376

Post by toast0 »

eru wrote: post #58
ggm wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

South Korea is a long way away, if supply chains are contested and there are competing bidders for their outputs. South Korea is far closer to Singapore. "Friends" is a strange concept in national strategic planning. You might ask yourself "just how much are those friends going to come and help when push comes to shove" and look at current politics, and re-assess what has been commonly felt these last 50 years: no pr…

There's always trade-offs. Even local shipping producers can't magic together a ship in a week. Of course, you can also look for some closer-to-home backup friends. My main point is that close allies (both geographically and in terms of relationship) are about as good as having your own local industry. In a few important cases and areas, having production with friends is better than at home. Mostly because it's harde…

> There's always trade-offs. Even local shipping producers can't magic together a ship in a week.

No, but depending on your (presumed national security) needs, you might be able to repurpose a ship that was almost done for another client. If you have active local shipbuilders, there should be some capacity there.

But, the trick is, how do you do it? The US Jones Act is trying, but US ship building capacity is pretty minimal. Just ordering military ships on the regular is expensive... Etc.

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#377

Post by pfdietz »

dijit wrote: post #367
showerst wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do we need more farmers, or for food to be more 'valued' in a monetary sense? The developed world is awash in affordable food. Even machine tools are incredibly cheap and accessible, the issues around those are related to where they're built and creating skilled labor to run them. I work laughably far from anything that provides basic needs to anybody, but that's not because I don't value food, it's because our syste…

ehhhh, lets be real. I’m a dyed in the wool meat eating junk eater. But, a lot of how we produce food today is not humane or sustainable, and a lot of the food itself is so poor in nutrition that it leaves us unhealthy and unbalanced. This isn’t a lecture, just an observation, I am guilty of eating (almost exclusively) poor quality, over processed, mass produced foods. But realistically speaking, if we solve the worl…

Why isn't it sustainable? All the inputs can be derived from non-fossil sources.

Maybe N2O emission? But I think that could be addressed technically.

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#378

Post by nradov »

bad_haircut72 wrote: post #372
zdragnar wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about the UK, but in the US this is only half true. Degree-requiring jobs still have better social status over trades and low/no skill work, at least from a "what do you want to be when you grow up" point of view. However, many more people than previously are skeptical of the math behind the cost of a college degree. Going into significant debt only to find a field flooded with others, competing with ove…

Theres simply no reason why college is as expensive as it is. The cynic in me says price increases are about setting up class boundaries and pushing people back into the necessary but less desirable factory/trade jobs of previous generations

There's no class warfare grand conspiracy going on. Like any businesses, colleges charge more because they can. Customers have been willing to pay, and the availability of government subsidized student loans made those customers relatively price insensitive. That model is finally starting to break.

To be fair to colleges, their costs have also increased somewhat. Baumol’s Cost Disease means that it's impossible to achieve significant productivity gains in education and so labor costs continuously increase. But that only accounts for a fraction of the total increase in college tuitions and fees.

https://www.chicagobooth.edu/review/diagnosing-william-baumo...

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#379

Post by tonyedgecombe »

Integer wrote: post #308
tonyedgecombe wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>anybody that ever worked there for more than 3 years To be fair what you get is proportional. If you are an NI payer for 4 years then you only get 4/32 of the state pension. Having said that the triple lock is a ridiculous idea. The trouble is people are loss averse so it is really hard to take away things people have got used to.

A minimum amount of 10 years is needed to get the basic pension (which is proportional to years worked), but years on Universal Credit (benefits) count towards this. Also, anyone who is of pension age is entitled to a Pension Credit top-up to a weekly income of £227.10.

>Also, anyone who is of pension age is entitled to a Pension Credit top-up to a weekly income of £227.10.

As long as you have less than £8,000 in the bank.

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#380

Post by tekla »

fmajid wrote: post #276
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 UK imports half its food, and was almost starved into submission by Nazi U-boats during WW2,, so you’d think they would know this, but laissez-faire ideology is strong in the ruling class.

The UK was never even near starvation levels during WW2. Bread, Vegetables and Fish were never even rationed.
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