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How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

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Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#381

Post by nradov »

bee_rider wrote: post #369
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…

What does modern manufacturing look like? Are you limited by a lack of people who can, like, use a screwdriver? Or by a lack of people who can use a CAD package? I worry that kids might hear “not enough people in the trades” and work on their hammer swinging skills. But in the US at least, you can get through k-12 without learning basic intro math stuff, like linear algebra or calculus. If that was the minimum, we co…

Never mind calculus. There are plenty of kids who graduate high school without the basic arithmetic and trigonometry skills necessary to be a good carpenter. The social promotion practice in primary and secondary schools has been a disaster.

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#382

Post by giorgioz »

ReptileMan wrote: post #198
giorgioz wrote: post #172

Italy is barely mentioned in the whole article. Today Italy is the biggest shipbuilding manufacturer in Europe: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/countries-dominate-global-s... I feel the double standard of such articles quick in pointing out Italy being behind in many statistics (which it is and is fair to point it out). When it's Britain behind the whole article is written only from the point of view of the UK and a…

There are few ships ever built that don't sink when you ram them properly into rocks. I don't think that I have read a single article that faulted the shipbuilder for the disaster.

It's true the shipbuilders were not critized but they were also not praised in this very specific article. Good and bad results should be both noticed. Times in the articles countries are mentioned: Japan 17x Germany 6x USA 4x China 3x France 3x Italy 1x South Korea 1x

compare that with the current tonnage of shipbuilding production: 1 China 32,859,862 51% 2 South Korea 18,317,886 28% 3 Japan 9,965,182 15% 4 Philippines 805,938 1% 5 Italy 402,164 0.62% 6 France 326,680 0.50% 7 Germany 289,666 0.45% 8 Finland 261,654 0.40% 9 Taiwan 187,558 0.29% 10 Russia 177,571 0.27% 11 Netherlands 90,596 0.14% 12 Türkiye 79,032 0.12% 13 Indonesia 75,979 0.12% 14 U.S. 64,809 0.10% 15 Iran 64,760 0.09%

Italy produces 2x ships than Germany but Germany is mentioned 6x. Stereotypical bias of German being engineers and Italian being funny/pizza makers.

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#383

Post by giorgioz »

giorgioz wrote: post #382
ReptileMan wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are few ships ever built that don't sink when you ram them properly into rocks. I don't think that I have read a single article that faulted the shipbuilder for the disaster.

It's true the shipbuilders were not critized but they were also not praised in this very specific article. Good and bad results should be both noticed. Times in the articles countries are mentioned: Japan 17x Germany 6x USA 4x China 3x France 3x Italy 1x South Korea 1x compare that with the current tonnage of shipbuilding production: 1 China 32,859,862 51% 2 South Korea 18,317,886 28% 3 Japan 9,965,182 15% 4 Philippi…

South Korea is also freaking awesome and shipbuiling and it's mentioned 1x. Maybe also the reason why the UK is behind is their arrogance in dismissing competitors that they have stereotypically decided they are not good at shipbuilding.

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#384

Post by nradov »

pjc50 wrote: post #187
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…

If you're going to talk about Edinburgh (I could almost see the Tasman ferry from my house), may I introduce you to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_ferry_fiasco "Originally intended to come into service in 2018 and 2019 respectively, both ferries have been delayed by over five years, and costs have more than quadrupled to £460 million" The Scottish government tried to do what commentators here are saying is t…

There are multiple causes behind that that scandal. But if the buyer had specified the ships to use cheap and simple diesel engines instead of requiring LNG fuel over silly concerns about emissions then they could have been build much faster at a fraction of the cost.

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#385

Post by palmotea »

throwaway290 wrote: post #151
rusk wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Tell that to Ukraine! Edit: it's not about throwing nukes at each other... It's about having nukes that you can use if someone invades you.

> Edit: it's not about throwing nukes at each other... It's about having nukes that you can use if someone invades you.

Russia has nukes and got invaded (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kursk_campaign), did it use them?

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#386

Post by mmooss »

impossiblefork wrote: post #108
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.

Yes, but in the end you still live in physical reality, and this determines our actual productivity. Whether we can make a boat, or a tennis racket, or a toothbrush cheaply is in the end what determines how many people can have boats, tennis rackets and toothbrushes, not whether the service economy, or our scientific research is excellent. We can hope to be able to do neat stuff and trade that for products, but in th…

That's not how, in physical reality, the world works. The question is not 'what is needed' but 'what adds value'.

If you walk into a room where a full crew of people are painting the walls, you don't add any value by picking up a paintbrush yourself - you may even get in the way. You need to find something valuable to contribute.

In our real world, many things that are needed are already well provided for: They are so cheap and easy to produce, that making more doesn't add value (and consequently earns little income). Making t-shirts is very cheap and easy; you provide little value by doing it yourself and consequently you won't be paid much for it. Another example is water: Potable water is absolutely essential to life - the most essential thing. But it's already well provided for and therefore we don't invest substantial resources in producing it. We'd be a very poor country if we made t-shirts and potable water, and deservedly so - we'd be adding little value to the world.

We add value to the world by doing hard things that others can't do: Designing chips, designing airplanes, writing software. Science is hard. Those add a lot of value - and you get paid well for it.

We're not starting from a world of nothing - maybe like 10,000 years ago - and adding things to it. Then t-shirts and especially potable water would be essential. We're starting in the world as it is now. Manufacturing, for many products, was valuable and hard in early-to-mid 20th century; when Henry Ford first did it, it was hard and extremely valuable. Now lots of people can do it and we add little value by doing it ourselves, and we won't get paid well either.

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#387

Post by tekla »

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

Government student loans made college prices effectively a made up number. If you can just make up a number and anyone can afford it because they're backed by the government, why wouldn't you just make the number go up?

Of course you can also juice up the numbers by lowering standards so that people who don't understand numbers or basic math above a 6th grade level take on these loans without actually understanding what they are doing.

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#388

Post by tim333 »

dijit wrote: post #358
dylan604 wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The highest value thing you can do in this life is produce food. Talk to a non-corporate farmer today, and ask them how valued their production of food is. Society, however, does not agree with your sentiment. Obviously I'm nitpicking, but if society agreed with your proposed value, the billionaires of the world would be farmers and not tech people. That's how weird and out of balance we seem to be today.

I think you missed my point. My point is that we’ve inversed the “value” of each sector. The highest good you can do for civilisation/society is also the least profitable. The lowest good you can do for civilisation is the most profitable. Thus our incentives are opposed diametrically from the benefit of society.

I'm not sure going into farming is even good for society at the moment. My dad was a farmer for a while and there was mostly a food surplus with the EU paying him to set aside land to control that. You do good for society by providing things it's short off.

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#389

Post by mmooss »

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.

Actually, the most powerful country in the world by far is the United States, and other than China, other Western countries that have followed this "myopia".

> rare earths

Rare earths are not a manufacturing product, but a natural resource. That's not an applicable example here.

Also, China is more dependent on the rest of the world than vice-versa; China has power, but certainly hasn't brought anyone to their knees - when has that happened?

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#390

Post by Tiktaalik »

guywithahat wrote: post #373
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]

It's all downstream of lack of investment.

The workers weren't productive because they weren't getting better tools. They weren't out there smashing the new machines to stay in the past, they weren't bought in the first place. So how is this the workers' problem that they somehow created?

The problem is the company ownership didn't invest and let those that did pass them by.

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