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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

#411

Post by nradov »

Panzer04 wrote: post #206
throwthrow0987 wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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)

The UK is far from self sufficient in food. You'd think they would have learned from their mistakes after they nearly starved to death due to the Axis blockade during WWII, but apparently not.

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#412

Post by throwaway290 »

palmotea wrote: post #385
throwaway290 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

having nukes doesn't mean when you invade a nuke-free country and it will just fall over for you. but not having nukes means a country with nukes can feel comfy invading you....

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#413

Post by mrguyorama »

theptip wrote: post #345
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…

Seems like you’ve smuggled in your conclusion with your definition of “highest value”? Using the normal definition (how many dollars we will pay for it) the statement is of course objectively false. Agriculture is certainly necessary, but to take a more extreme example, is air valuable?

>Using the normal definition (how many dollars we will pay for it)

Ah, pot calling kettle black!

The "normal" definition you claim is smuggling the equivalent of an entire cultural ideological framing.

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#414

Post by tim333 »

hypeatei wrote: post #45
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…

I'm of the opinion that things like shipbuilding don't really matter in times of war for countries with nuclear weapons. There would be dire consequences for anyone invading and/or blockading a nuclear armed country. A lot of people seem to yearn for the "good old days" where we built giant, tangible things that did cool stuff. That's fine, but the "national security" arguments ring hollow as you're basically saying…

Even without nuclear weapons, shipping seems quite vulnerable to naval drones and cruise missiles these days.

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#415

Post by jack_tripper »

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

>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

This makes absolutely no sense when you spend two seconds to think about the supply and demand.

Case in point, college is free in Europe and that has led to the exact problem you fear: oversupply of college grads and devaluation of degrees "pushing people back into the necessary but less desirable factory/trade jobs of previous generations".

In my European college town it's easier to find a ML developer than a skilled HVAC tech or EV mechanic.

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#416

Post by Theodores »

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…

In my opinion, shipbuilding is different to other industries that the UK was known for.

The UK was once an 'island of coal in a sea of fish'. But we used up the easy-to-reach coal and ate all of the fish. Not only that, we also used up all of the easy to access iron ore.

I am no fan of Margaret Thatcher, however, how would shipbuilding make sense in the UK once the raw materials have to be shipped in from the lowest wage mines on the planet?

It would make more sense to build the ships nearer to the raw materials. Yes I know the Koreans, Japanese, Germans and Chinese have the same resource allocation problems, but the workers were cheaper, offsetting the material and energy costs.

Regarding the UK being 'particularly good at finance, insurance, etc.', London is the portal to tax havens, as in the islands that were the former British empire. The U.S. has some financial regulation that London lacks, hence the arrangement and relevance of London.

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#417

Post by ReptileMan »

csomar wrote: post #317
ReptileMan wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the fundamental thing you get wrong. The whole industrial knowledge thing was build because we were building stuff internally. When you are outsourcing assembly you are actually sending quite a lot of the knowledge and know how that went into the high value act of designing a thing. For free. We live at a physical world - so being able to produce physical stuff both better, more, and cheaper is extremely impo…

> When you are outsourcing assembly you are actually sending quite a lot of the knowledge and know how that went into the high value act of designing a thing. I don't think so. Employees on the chain line are not going to become literate and engineers just because you are outsourcing the menial stuff. > so being able to produce physical stuff both better, more, and cheaper That is knowledge work. > The only area chin…

>It didn't stop Brazil from creating a rather very good aerospace company.

That uses prat and whitney and GE engines

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#418

Post by tim333 »

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.

We import a lot by value but less so by calories. We could probably get by on domestic bread and potatoes if blockaded but the oranges, bananas and tuna fish would be in short supply.

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#419

Post by BeFlatXIII »

nradov wrote: post #381
bee_rider wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Social promotion is the expected outcome of rewarding schools for graduation rates.

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#420

Post by tim333 »

shevy-java wrote: post #322

Somehow the UK is really in a downhill trend. For decades. BREXIT kind of accelerated that; people such as Nigel Farage won't follow on their promise. There won't be noteworthy economic growth for the common man. The naval situation is even worse, because the UK totally depends on the USA now for its own nuclear arsenal. The UK has basically stopped being independent. Changing this will be hard and I don't think anyo…

The stuff in the article, that the UK is losing rich people isn't a long term issue but fairly recent, basically since brexit and the getting rid of non dom tax breaks.
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