[thorin]

Same reason it got out of every other industry. It wasn't short-term profitable. After the 70s at least everything began moving to the private sector and there was no strategic thinking. This completed in the 90s and there was no reason for anyone to think that semi-conductors, minerals, even oil and gas now shouldn't be bought from a friend rather than being produced internally.

[avianlyric]

Not quite the conclusions of the article. As it points out the UK nationalised its shipbuilding industry in the 70s in a last ditch effort to turn it around, and despite operating it at a significant loss for a decade failed to make it even slightly competitive. In the 90s the industry was then privatised again once it was clear there was no saving it anymore.

For the vast majority of its history the UK shipbuilding industry was completely private, and dominated by many small shipbuilders. Consolidation only started after the UK government stepped in to provide some kind of sensible strategy to improve the competitiveness of the industry, via government loans tied to longer term strategic goals to improve productivity.

Ultimately it seems that the UK shipbuilding industry was kill by the thing that once made it so dominant. It was a highly distributed, extremely flat, high skilled industry, with little to no management. It made it easy for the industry to rapidly grow and shrink, and made it extremely effective at producing bespoke products. But as the world moved towards standardisation, those strengths became weaknesses.

The lack of management structure made it impossible for the industry to properly recognise the issues, or effect change to fix the issues. And the world moved towards standardisation, which gave a huge advantage to shipbuilders that built up capital intensive infrastructure that allowed the use of lower skilled labour to produce standard design quick, cheaper, and to a higher quality, than the UK distributed, high skill, labour force.

[vintermann]

> It was a highly distributed, extremely flat, high skilled industry, with little to no management. It made it easy for the industry to rapidly grow and shrink, and made it extremely effective at producing bespoke products.

... That sounds a lot like the Norwegian shipbuilding industry which I work for right now. Maybe not with little management exactly, but nothing crazy either - significantly less than a British multinational I worked for earlier. Of course the hulls are built elsewhere, and half of my colleagues are foreigners, but we're going fairly strong.

So I'm not sure I buy this explanation. Why wouldn't the British do management equally well as us?

[oliwarner]

It's important to note that nationalising ship building was a last-ditch parachute for hundreds of thousands of manual workers, not the cause of its decline.

Decades of state subsidy of it both directly and of its suppliers had failed and taking it on was far cheaper for the country than letting it and British Steel, and the National Coal Board all simultaneously fail.

[lm28469]

It's almost as if Europe entirely gave up sometime in the 70s. People used to have vision for the next 50+ years, now they care about the next 3-5 years because they know they'll bounce to another position. That's why everything is seemingly slowly crumbling away (healthcare, industries, culture, education), we're putting bandaids here and there to maintain the illusion but I think everyone can tell the general trend

[dijit]

I always got the feeling as a child that I was growing up in the ruins of a once strong nation. I thought it was because my city (Coventry) was devastated after world-war-2 (the blitz: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coventry_Blitz), the collapse of the British car industry (which, primarily affected Coventry) and then the closing of the coal mines leading to lower income tax money to the council for roads and things.

However I just returned last night from a trip to London (I live in Sweden now) and I have to say, the decline is precipitous and pronounced, London gets all the investment so if it's decaying this way then I shudder to think about the rest of the nation.

I think a lot of people outside the UK believe that because the UK had an empire that everybody was rich. This is decidedly not the case, the first people the British elite subjugated was the British themselves, that's why most of the food we're mocked about is so bland: it's poverty food, so when I say that it feels like a decline, please keep it within the context that most of us have our entire family tree in the underclass - not because we were once rich.

Most infrastructure has not been invested in during my lifetime, and it was old when I was a child.

[ben_w]

Europe as a whole didn't give up in the 1970s, but the 1970s was famously bad for the UK.

That said, I think this was more a case of when the rot in the UK became visible rather than when it started; the British government hasn't been competent for a very long time, and still isn't. With the caveat that I'm not a historian and have only an amateur knowledge of the events, I'd say the problems set in even before the peak of the British Empire, which itself I place at just before the outbreak of WW1 owing to how Pyrrhic that victory was.

[roenxi]

People have a very clear vision of 50 years in the future, it has been a major fight playing out for decades. One side wanted cheap energy and lots of industry, the other side wanted green energy and not much industry. That debate has been ongoing and everyone involved was pretty up-front about what the consequences would be.

The turn away from nuclear power around the turn of the century was probably the decisive moment. From then on it hasn't been possible to articulate a vision of a prosperous society with a realistic path to get there.

[vintermann]

Europe? I'm building high tech vessels in Europe right now. Even most of the hulls are made in Europe.

Are you sure this isn't about Britain, and how the finance industry gave that county its own version of "Dutch disease", making it comparatively unprofitable to do anything but managing assets?

[jimbohn]

I think it's in part generational (a bunch of western countries have a quasi dead-locked democracy because boomers will vote whatever suits them short term, they will be dead when the bill comes anyway) and part due to the lack of accountability that democracy has brought to the upper echelon of society, or lack of skin in the game for the ruling class.

Revolving doors, blatant corruption, and downright incompetence lead to absolutely no repercussions; what's there to lose? Schröder is the poster child of this.

We are creating generations of people with no stake in society (no housing, no family because it's costs too much and no time anyway) while at the same time having a complete lack of ethos as a civilization, with a terrible ruling class. Europe (and the UK) are in a horrible position.

[Hikikomori]

Colonies disappeared quickly post ww2. US imperialism did continue strongly for a while with Cia/political meddling to allow American companies to continue resource extraction.

[otikik]

3-5 years is "long term vision" now.

People plan quarter to quarter.

[raverbashing]

The rest of Europe keeps building ships.

[inglor_cz]

" People used to have vision for the next 50+ years, now they care about the next 3-5 years "

This sounds like a modern version of Golden Age nostalgia. First, I am not at all sure that people had longer visions; some probably did, but the entire nations? Not so sure.

Second, there is a certain wisdom in accepting that you don't know how the world will look in 50+ years. 50 years ago, China was an extremely impoverished country that no one would take seriously as a competitor for global influence, Iran was US-friendly and the USSR was on the peak of its power.

[inglor_cz]

The (much longer) article says something different than you do, though there is certain overlap.

The issues were longer-term and revolved around a failure to update working methods as the rest of the world developed.

[Spooky23]

The bigger issue is that there’s no demand for ships. When containers distributed the industry, the whole thing moved to flags of convenience and mostly asian crews.

There’s a reason why the docks in every rich country have given way to condos and esplanades. The financialization of everything was an accelerant, not a root cause.

[tonyhart7]

there are reason why most advance country move to service based economy than manufacturing

1. manufacturing doesnt scale

2. in peace time, globalization is really good with no downside. while factory is not in the western soil. the owner is still largely western company

[boomskats]

You mean a friend with a lobbying budget and a revolving door?

[pipes]

I think a lot of it is because after world war 2 the labour government decided that a centralised planned economy and nationalisation of every business (and I do mean every, this was in labours manifesto until new labour in the 90s) would perform better. It didn't work, it destroyed industries.

This gives some idea of what happened: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=O7PVEaPh6Fw&pp=ygUgYWRhbSBzbWl...