401–410 of 531 posts
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The idea is that, if it's that important, you ultimately fund it from taxation. It's so important that it's really defence spending.
The UK has been slashing defence spending since WW2. And with reason the USSR lost because they couldn't afford the cold war anymore.
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-...
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> 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.
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My understanding is that the UK currently has 5 attack submarines. Is that enough to break a blockade? More are planned (the SSN-AUKUS), but it is probably still some time away.
That's around 100 torpedoes loaded in the water. Is that enough to break a blockade?
It was sort of a Innovator's Dilemma sort of situation, where these guys who had built careers out of being the skilled labor and had long hated management were not interested in the sort of capital investment it would take to build their own "M/V This Was Laid Down in Rosyth Two Weeks Ago."
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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.
Even back during the Age of Sail when Britain was the dominant naval power with a worldwide empire, they had to import many of the inputs for their domestic shipbuilding industry. This included basic stuff like timber, tar, hemp, cotton, etc. If you have enough warships to secure your sea lines of communication then depending on imports is less of a concern. But the UK Royal Navy today is a shadow of its former self…
The reason China, Korea and Japan dominate shipbuilding today is entirely two factors: export credits and generous financing by government-run banks.
The financing terms are so attractive that you don't want to buy from anywhere else. Those governments also reinvested almost all proceeds into expansion. There's something like a three-year backlog and you can place orders without tying up capital.
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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.
You rise food prices and there's a domino effect on the economy, everything else also increases in price.
It is important the EU is able to produce its own food at acceptable prices.
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> Bad quality at one company is one thing, but if you’re arguing bad quality happened across a whole industry or country There's a culture in industries. As you said, look at Germany. Look at the culture in SV - it would be hard to open a development business of any size that ran completely against the SV engineering culture. > the country that started the industrial revolution and could come up with the Rolls Royce…
"That is almost literally ancient history. Nearly Medieval history". What absolute rubbish. Rolls Royce is one of the leading aero engine makers today. They make the engines for the 787 and the A350, and many other planes.
Calling the referenced achievements ancient history isn't an unreasonable take, despite current successes.
They can build faster and cheaper in Asia. Something the Netherlands learned after they threw a lot of money at it trying to save the shipyard industry. Just accept heavy industry is over and find new ways to make money. You will never out build Asians but you can out bullshit them and nobody bullshits better than the Dutch!
Western governments just aren't committed enough, have too much bloat and want a fiction of separation from private businesses.
I love how the capitalist laws of markets that instigated the rise of China as a the main ship builder - cheaper labor, automated production, low cost of all the source materials also coming from China - don't seem to apply for the people making the argument of protectional national strategic industries. This is no different than any other industry. Unless you are on the cutting edge of a product where innovation is…