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How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

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Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#431

Post by mrguyorama »

dylan604 wrote: post #355
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…

> 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.

>Talk to a non-corporate farmer today, and ask them how valued their production of food is.

America spends $20-$30 billion a year paying corn growers per bushel of corn they grow

America spends $100 billion+ per year paying people to buy the output of those farmers using food stamps.

America requires that 10-15% of all gas in the entire nation is actually ethanol derived from corn.

Twice now, President Trump has personally destroyed the market for American soybean production and dropped $20 billion on the industry to not piss them off.

I am family friends with the family that grows a significant amount of Potatoes in Maine. They love to complain about anything and everything as they drive around in $80k pavement princess trucks that aren't their $80k work trucks about how much liberals suck as those at least third generation farmers inherit the entire thing and they switch to cute "artisanal" breeds of potatoes that they sell to those same liberals for a nice markup and harvest them with the literal undocumented workers they swear they hate and pay a few dollars an hour, and insist the men aren't men anymore as they drive their airconditioned harvesters and aren't missing any fingers like their ancestors, and spend all their free time getting piss drunk and smoking weed which was grown by their cop buddies as they vote for people who want to make such a thing a crime again, and reminisce about when they were important; In high school. They are actually pretty friendly if you have the right skin color and genitals though.

I think farmers can maybe quit the bellyaching. Most of the modern world solved famine by just giving farmers money for doing a basic job, one that's been so improved and enhanced by technology that they are allowed to care about such things as "How will a trade war affect my profits this year" instead of "Oh my god oh my god an unexpected frost we are all going to die". It is some of the best $150 billion the US spends.

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#432

Post by greedo »

HPsquared wrote: post #158
rhubarbtree wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We may add to that - the UK’s nuclear deterrent is onboard submarines.

It's a lot of reliance placed on one rather complex system. See "Trident Missile Test Fails for Second Time in a Row" (Feb 2024) https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-68355395

Of all the current nuclear weapons delivery systems, Trident is probably the most reliable. Minuteman might be up there due to being a very very mature system, but I would take Trident in a heart beat.

https://www.iiss.org/online-analysis/online-analysis/2024/03...

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#433

Post by greedo »

scott_w wrote: post #224
rusk wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Russia aren’t going to use nukes on their own doorstep. That’s a a NATO problem. It’s like openly knifing somebody in public repeatedly while holding the would be hero’s at bay with a gun. Yes this is an actual thing that happened in the UK about 10 years ago.

Um... Russia's doctrine during the Cold War was to turn Poland into a nuclear wasteland to stop Nato advancing through it. At the time, Poland was a part of the USSR. What Russia considers "a buffer zone" is really "inferior peoples we can atomise without having to open a new conflict with a foreign power." To be clear, I use the term "inferior peoples" as seen from the Russian point of view.

You've got it reversed...

Soviet doctrine (not Russian) was to use tactical nuclear weapons immediately during their attempt to invade West Germany and march to the Atlantic.

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#434

Post by nradov »

jack_tripper wrote: post #427
nradov wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's not nearly enough. The exact number of weapons onboard is largely irrelevant. At any given time only about one third of a nation's attack submarines can be out on active patrol while the others are in transit, undergoing maintenance, or working up. During a crisis they can maybe surge two thirds of the force for a few months but that isn't sustainable. Each submarine can only be in one place at a time and th…

That's why my money(figuratively) is on Kraken Roboticss and Anduril's autonomous robot submarines. This will be the future of naval warfare.

That's so naive. Those robot submarines will be useful for local defense but they lack the range, speed, and staying power to project power and protect sea lines of communication over thousands of miles on a sustained basis. The notion of doing that with robots remains firmly in the realm of science fiction today. Maybe in 30 years.

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#435

Post by brainwad »

nradov wrote: post #397
robbie-c wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've wondered about this too. I live in the UK and have been idly daydreaming about my next startup, and it seems like Brexit, and therefore having a small market / uncooperative EU, is such a headwind for some of the things I'd like to do. Seems like many UK startups just pretend to be based in SF. I think rejoin is going to be politically unpopular for a while, as there's no way we could rejoin the EU on anything l…

The UK is obviously too small and poor to go it alone forever. The other option for them would be economic integration with North America. They could probably join up with the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) on relatively favorable terms.

That's far from obvious. The UK is 3x the population of Australia, which manages fine without deep economic integrations. The problem of Brexit is not that it is impossible to go it alone as a middle power; it's just an unnecessary handicap when you border a 450m head market but want to ignore them and act like you are an island at the arse end of the world.

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#436

Post by varjag »

kelipso wrote: post #359
varjag wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aside from you apparently replying to some other comment than mine: Russia honors no treaties or alliances except when it's convenient.

I am replying to you comment. You are doing the exact same thing again. Saying “Russia honors no treaties or alliances except when it's convenient” is just so you can feel better about whatever. It’s just not how reality and geopolitics work…

I am replying to you comment.

Please. Your reply had nothing to do with the context of my comment. I in fact gave you a benefit of doubt that you're not just a very quantized LLM.

As to the trustworthiness let's tally:

- Khasavyurt Accords. Breached by Russia.

- New START Treaty. Breached by Russia.

- Armenian request under allied auspices of CSTO: not honored by Russia.

- Russia-Ukraine Friendship Treaty, Budapest Memorandum, Border Treaty: breached by Russia.

It's clear you speak very confidently on the subject you have zero clue about.

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#437

Post by mrguyorama »

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]

I love how often people who are probably in the bay area say this as the unionized members of Hollywood next door have no problem rejecting truly mediocre laborers and paying "10xers" millions of dollars per performance.

Do you know who were literal members of that union? Both Reagan (twice president of the union) and Trump.

Despite having a stranglehold style, where union members are not allowed to work on non-union projects, the industry still cultivates talent and allows both normal people doing day jobs making average wages and Superstar members like Jeff Bridges and Tom Hanks and George Clooney and Meryl Streep and Betty White.

This union has been able to keep up with changes in technology, ensuring their members benefited from streaming taking over the primary content delivery mechanism and getting a contract that accounts for it, and now getting protections from AI.

These big names regularly show support and go to bat for the literal little guy, knowing that if you can't make rent from writing movies, they won't have anything to star in and make a million dollars from.

This union contract is also a major reason actors are able to actually control how they are used, and gives actors control over things like sex scenes

A significant reason why Hollywood is currently full of terrible quality Visual Effects is that CGI has a significant non-unionized portion that is currently getting absolutely abused. Disney doesn't GAF, people still paid half a billion dollars to see the slop that was Doctor Strange in the multiverse of Madness.

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#438

Post by pfdietz »

_DeadFred_ wrote: post #430
pfdietz wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Huh? Nitrogen fertilizer is mostly derived from fossil fuels and has been since the 1900s food boom. Aren't phosphates mainly shipped from islands that build up huge stocks of bird poop? The inputs are all fossil fuel intensive.

Nitrogen fertilizer is synthesized from hydrogen and nitrogen. The hydrogen is currently derived from fossil fuels, but there is no requirement that it be so.

Saying "ammonia is produced from fossil fuels, and so must always be" is like saying "cars run on fossil fuels, and so always must". A non sequitur.

Phosphates are derived from large phosphate deposits in various places, such as Florida. Phosphorus will ultimately have to be mined from lower concentration deposits, perhaps ultimately from average crustal rocks, where it appears at about 0.1% concentration. However, build up of mostly insoluble phosphates in soils will I think likely reduce the need for this fertilizer if erosion is kept in check.

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#439

Post by devilbunny »

ggm wrote: post #56
hypeatei wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You seem to think nuclear weapons stop all forms of tension short of nuclear war but the evidence is strong that even nuclear armed parties do things which don't include nuclear weapons. India applies strategic pressures to it's neighbours including ones with nuclear weapons. They're bashing each other with sticks and stones on the border, to avoid pulling nuclear triggers. There was an ad-blue shortage in Australia…

The purpose of diesel exhaust fluid is to decrease emissions, right? It’s not actually needed for engines to work. So in the case of something like the mining industry, crucial to the national economy, the government can just pass a temporary waiver. Or am I missing something?

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#440

Post by mike_hearn »

lmm wrote: post #77
mike_hearn wrote: post #5

It's a good analysis but probably over-fixates on shipping specific factors. The UK also lost its car industry, its steel industry etc. The root cause in most industries is the same, there were just too many Labour supporters and the unions got too strong as a result. From the comments: > I can relate to British union rules being head-bangingly stupid. In the mid-1970's I worked on the night shift as a spot-welder on…

> The root cause in most industries is the same, there were just too many Labour supporters and the unions got too strong as a result. And yet Germany, the great success story of retaining manufacturing in a western developed country, had and has far stronger leftists and far stronger unions than the UK. So evidently this was not the reason at all, although I'm sure getting the public to think it was is very useful t…

> Note that a work-to-rule is a dispute escalation tactic, one step down from a full-on strike. This was not routine activity.

In the period where the British industries were wiped, that kind of tactic was being used routinely. The German unions were much less aggressively leftist than British unions.

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