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UK ignited the First Industrial Revolution. It's sad to see that UK has slipped to number 16 or lower when it came to the market share of global manufacturing.

UK ignited the First Industrial Revolution. It's sad to see that UK has slipped to number 16 or lower when it came to the market share of global manufacturing. And the problem is not to just UK, but to pretty much all the developed countries. Many nations and people have benefited greatly from globalization, but I have to ask: is it worth it if the cost is forfeiting my own country's manufacturing know-how and supply chains? And yes, I'm fully aware of the theory of comparative advantages, but in the meantime, but manufacturing can still bring great income to many families and nations still compete and even go to wars with each other, right?

pjc50 2y ago
Even the Americans can't manage economic isolation. It takes a global civilisation to build a smartphone. We might have been able to get closer to it by being in the EU, but now we're on our own on that one.
- hintymad 2y ago
  Yeah, I do recognize that. I just wish that the US could have a healthy mixture of light and heavy industry, so that the cost building any mission critical systems will not go through the roof, and so that we will be able t build anything domestically if we want. Even though it's likely a pipe dream now, but at least the US can do so for the WW II and after WW II for quite some time.
  - talldayo 2y ago
    That ship sailed. It's like the other comment said - China embraces manufacturing to make other countries inept at it. It's not only that American precision engineering is mostly at parity with China, it's that manufacturing anywhere else is a waste of money. When unibody aluminum Macbook cases are machined, they never are machined in America. They're sold to Americans, marketed as an American company, but your device (even at the markup Apple charges) cannot be made economically in America, period. In a broader sense, I'd say that America is headed down the same road the UK is too. We expect people to pay hand-over-fist for our tech talent that isn't any better than what you can get in Pakistan or China. Our hard markets are getting bearish, our leadership wants to de-globalize, and American tech wants to maintain global control without acquiescing to local governance. America had the economic lead before WWI and after WWII, but now we've bet the farm on our ability to market bullshit. America's national economy cannot survive if the App Store and ChatGPT are our premier exports.
    - creer 2y ago
      > unibody aluminum Macbook This to me is a super interesting example. Nobody but nobody NEEDS a unibody aluminum anything. But it's cool, light, beautiful - and sells great - so it's what gets produced even when the only place that makes sense for that is China. The Macbook could temporarily return to more manageable production - like plastic - and the world would not end.
      - talldayo 2y ago
        It's a commercialized and well-distributed example. You could replace it with any other machined commodity - engine blocks, turbojets, ablative shielding, toilet seats, you name it. The industries have all moved in the same direction and have no hope of ever coming back. Capitalism fought authoritarian subsidy, and capitalism lost.
        creer 2y ago
        > Capitalism fought authoritarian subsidy, and capitalism lost. If we are going to blame something I would think it's the chinese enthusiasm for capitalist business development. It's not the chinese State Owned Enterprises that earn american contracts, mostly. Not to mention Foxconn being a taiwanese company that earned that business in the US to begin with (and only later moved it to mainland china.)
- nradov 2y ago
  Realistically in order to prosper the UK needs to join up as part of a "greater NAFTA" trade bloc. But the UK no longer has anything that the USA needs so they'll have to make major concessions to get a deal done.
  - Symbiote 2y ago
    The UK left the largest free trade area a few years ago. There's little appetite to join the American one, as it would mean lowering standards (food etc) which ruins Britain's specialties.
    - brewdad 2y ago
      I realize it's an outdated stereotype but man it says nothing good about America when the UK won't join up because it would compromise the quality of available foods.
    - nradov 2y ago
      When you're starving you eat what's available regardless of how appetizing it looks. The UK isn't starving yet, but how long can they hold out? And has NAFTA ruined Canadian or Mexican food?
      - Symbiote 2y ago
        Why would the UK run out of food? They grow plenty, and the rest of Europe is very close and happy to sell theirs. Food is cheap in Britain, cost and supply aren't problems.
        nradov 2y ago
        Apparently I was being a little too subtle. I meant starving for free trade relationships and participation in a larger economic bloc, not literally starving from lack of food. The point is that UK will have to join up with someone else eventually; they lack the scale to go it alone.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- creer 2y ago
  That's not entirely true (about global civilization being needed). Any nominally developped but not too wasteful country or even just California could do it. It's just that that ship has sailed and we collectively decided a long time ago NOT to go that way. Recovering from these choices would take a lot of time and a lot of money that we would rather spend on railroads to and from nowhere (California). Sarcasm aside, americans, europeans, japan in particular are not ready to pay the price for that - even while they could totally afford it. They are busy paying the price for lots of other things and can't be bothered.
wcfrobert 2y ago
The US outsourced its manufacturing to China in the name of comparative advantage. Bob bakes bread, Alice grow apples. Everyone is better off because of specialization. In Thomas Friedman's latest nyt column, he refers to China's manufacturing dominance as a play to de-industrializing other countries. It may just be globalization is incompatible with political realities.
- soVeryTired 2y ago
  Or… Bob makes bread, Alice grows flowers. Alice needs bread; Bob likes flowers but can go without if he wants to. Who’s going to come off worse if they have an argument?
  - chronic7300690 2y ago
    > Who’s going to come off worse if they have an argument? The US. But 4 year election cycles and quarterly earning reports are incompatible with long-term planning.
    - ericmay 2y ago
      On the other hand, long-term planning is susceptible to disruption and unforeseen events, and when we have long-term government plans they have a way of taking on a life of their own and defending themselves even if they have outlived their usefulness. Everything has trade-offs.
- constantcrying 2y ago
  >Bob bakes bread, Alice grow apples. Everyone is better off because of specialization. America is 300 Million. Europe is almost a Billion. These populations are more than large enough to specialize in everything. >Everyone is better off because of specialization. Why?
  - creer 2y ago
    > These populations are more than large enough to specialize in everything. My impression is that population size is not very relevant in the math of trade specialization profit. It's still more profitable to play on relative strengths and weaknesses. You can find other things to worry about like security (from droughts and earthquakes perhaps), or political or strategic desires. In particular, trade is likely beneficial even when local production would be cheaper than remote production - just because there are other things that can be done localy and even stronger (like phone games or advertising-oriented browser feature destruction /s).
kjkjadksj 2y ago
When the UK had its industrial revolution it had an empire. I’d say dropping to 16 is pretty fair given its size and influence today.
flir 2y ago
When I was a kid (80s) I knew old boys with lathes and mills and pillar drills at the bottom of the garden. They were the last generation, I think, of a tradition rooted in the Victorian era which informally transferred a lot of knowledge from one generation to the next. My pet theory is that their disappearance is tied closely to the cost of land. I see US-based hardware hobbyists' shops on YouTube, and I think "I couldn't even afford to build a shed that big". The tools themselves are often actually pretty cheap second hand at auction, because the demand is so low, but I live on the back of a postage stamp in comparison with those guys. (Another possibility is simply that software ate the world.)
- qazxcvbnmlp 2y ago
  Land is expensive in the areas people want to live. But yeah, tools are much cheaper, esp if you slowly grow over time.
- rjsw 2y ago
  My grandfather got a lathe and pillar drill as his retirement gift from work, he also taught me how to etch PCBs and build radios.
- jillyboel 2y ago
  It's insane how much space there is in America, and most Americans don't realize this beyond a simple "america big".
- Theodores 2y ago
  Blame the Thatcher Revolution and the sell-off of the council housing estates. Councils used to actually make money from housing, however, the revenue went back into building more homes, so more revenue. Rents were not extortionate or subsidised, however, if you were on benefits then you would get your rent covered. The council housing provided an option at a base price, private landlords could not compete if they also had to pay for the mortgage, at a time when interest rates were a lot higher. Once the council housing was sold off, there was no longer this base price, unless you wanted to spend five years on the list for a housing association, as in the privatised council housing estate. This change meant that the best place for your money was in property. Property was no longer a near-depreciating asset, house price inflation went through the roof, but was not part of the inflation index. Since then the economy has been that of rent-seeking. There is no point making stuff as you might as well sell the premises to a developer to convert into luxury flats, which then get bought by rent-seekers and rented out to people that would have had a full-feature council house in previous times. When a rent-seeker has income from one property, they can remortgage to buy another, then use leverage to buy more and more. Rent-seeking is not adding anything to the economy, no product is made. However, rent-seekers vote Conservative. In an economy where everyone has to pay more for the parasites that are the rent-seekers, the cost of labour goes up. This is just because people need more money to pay to have a roof over their head, not because they want gold taps. This is the root cause of the decline of the West, you are probably old enough to remember how this capital from rent-seeking spread out from London to even the slowest seaside town. Wherever it went, businesses stopped making stuff and started importing instead. Once that business of making stuff has gone, it never comes back. The real value is in making stuff even though there is plenty of profit in retail, 'no product is made'. Furthermore, it is not possible to stop someone from doing the same as you, buying widgets from China, marking them up and flogging them with an English manual. In the USA the situation is the same in the big cities. In the flyover states there is a different Ponzi scheme afoot, with vast tracts of suburbia built but without the long-term tax base to maintain the roads and other infrastructure indefinitely. So long as there is cheap oil and the dollar is the reserve currency, it all works with printing money, with the world taking the inflation hit, not the USA. The sheds you see full of toys are not in New York, they will be somewhere such as Florida or Texas.
constantcrying 2y ago
>but in the meantime, but manufacturing can still bring great income to many families How so? If you aren't willing to buy from China many products will become unavailable and the rest will go up 10x in price. Disentangling yourself from the global economic system is hard and painful, especially if you have just disentangled yourself from one super block.

pjc50 2y ago

Even the Americans can't manage economic isolation. It takes a global civilisation to build a smartphone. We might have been able to get closer to it by being in the EU, but now we're on our own on that one.

hintymad 2y ago
Yeah, I do recognize that. I just wish that the US could have a healthy mixture of light and heavy industry, so that the cost building any mission critical systems will not go through the roof, and so that we will be able t build anything domestically if we want. Even though it's likely a pipe dream now, but at least the US can do so for the WW II and after WW II for quite some time.
- talldayo 2y ago
  That ship sailed. It's like the other comment said - China embraces manufacturing to make other countries inept at it. It's not only that American precision engineering is mostly at parity with China, it's that manufacturing anywhere else is a waste of money. When unibody aluminum Macbook cases are machined, they never are machined in America. They're sold to Americans, marketed as an American company, but your device (even at the markup Apple charges) cannot be made economically in America, period. In a broader sense, I'd say that America is headed down the same road the UK is too. We expect people to pay hand-over-fist for our tech talent that isn't any better than what you can get in Pakistan or China. Our hard markets are getting bearish, our leadership wants to de-globalize, and American tech wants to maintain global control without acquiescing to local governance. America had the economic lead before WWI and after WWII, but now we've bet the farm on our ability to market bullshit. America's national economy cannot survive if the App Store and ChatGPT are our premier exports.
  - creer 2y ago
    > unibody aluminum Macbook This to me is a super interesting example. Nobody but nobody NEEDS a unibody aluminum anything. But it's cool, light, beautiful - and sells great - so it's what gets produced even when the only place that makes sense for that is China. The Macbook could temporarily return to more manageable production - like plastic - and the world would not end.
    - talldayo 2y ago
      It's a commercialized and well-distributed example. You could replace it with any other machined commodity - engine blocks, turbojets, ablative shielding, toilet seats, you name it. The industries have all moved in the same direction and have no hope of ever coming back. Capitalism fought authoritarian subsidy, and capitalism lost.
      - creer 2y ago
        > Capitalism fought authoritarian subsidy, and capitalism lost. If we are going to blame something I would think it's the chinese enthusiasm for capitalist business development. It's not the chinese State Owned Enterprises that earn american contracts, mostly. Not to mention Foxconn being a taiwanese company that earned that business in the US to begin with (and only later moved it to mainland china.)
nradov 2y ago
Realistically in order to prosper the UK needs to join up as part of a "greater NAFTA" trade bloc. But the UK no longer has anything that the USA needs so they'll have to make major concessions to get a deal done.
- Symbiote 2y ago
  The UK left the largest free trade area a few years ago. There's little appetite to join the American one, as it would mean lowering standards (food etc) which ruins Britain's specialties.
  - brewdad 2y ago
    I realize it's an outdated stereotype but man it says nothing good about America when the UK won't join up because it would compromise the quality of available foods.
  - nradov 2y ago
    When you're starving you eat what's available regardless of how appetizing it looks. The UK isn't starving yet, but how long can they hold out? And has NAFTA ruined Canadian or Mexican food?
    - Symbiote 2y ago
      Why would the UK run out of food? They grow plenty, and the rest of Europe is very close and happy to sell theirs. Food is cheap in Britain, cost and supply aren't problems.
      - nradov 2y ago
        Apparently I was being a little too subtle. I meant starving for free trade relationships and participation in a larger economic bloc, not literally starving from lack of food. The point is that UK will have to join up with someone else eventually; they lack the scale to go it alone.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
creer 2y ago
That's not entirely true (about global civilization being needed). Any nominally developped but not too wasteful country or even just California could do it. It's just that that ship has sailed and we collectively decided a long time ago NOT to go that way. Recovering from these choices would take a lot of time and a lot of money that we would rather spend on railroads to and from nowhere (California). Sarcasm aside, americans, europeans, japan in particular are not ready to pay the price for that - even while they could totally afford it. They are busy paying the price for lots of other things and can't be bothered.

wcfrobert 2y ago

The US outsourced its manufacturing to China in the name of comparative advantage. Bob bakes bread, Alice grow apples. Everyone is better off because of specialization. In Thomas Friedman's latest nyt column, he refers to China's manufacturing dominance as a play to de-industrializing other countries. It may just be globalization is incompatible with political realities.

soVeryTired 2y ago
Or… Bob makes bread, Alice grows flowers. Alice needs bread; Bob likes flowers but can go without if he wants to. Who’s going to come off worse if they have an argument?
- chronic7300690 2y ago
  > Who’s going to come off worse if they have an argument? The US. But 4 year election cycles and quarterly earning reports are incompatible with long-term planning.
  - ericmay 2y ago
    On the other hand, long-term planning is susceptible to disruption and unforeseen events, and when we have long-term government plans they have a way of taking on a life of their own and defending themselves even if they have outlived their usefulness. Everything has trade-offs.
constantcrying 2y ago
>Bob bakes bread, Alice grow apples. Everyone is better off because of specialization. America is 300 Million. Europe is almost a Billion. These populations are more than large enough to specialize in everything. >Everyone is better off because of specialization. Why?
- creer 2y ago
  > These populations are more than large enough to specialize in everything. My impression is that population size is not very relevant in the math of trade specialization profit. It's still more profitable to play on relative strengths and weaknesses. You can find other things to worry about like security (from droughts and earthquakes perhaps), or political or strategic desires. In particular, trade is likely beneficial even when local production would be cheaper than remote production - just because there are other things that can be done localy and even stronger (like phone games or advertising-oriented browser feature destruction /s).

kjkjadksj 2y ago

When the UK had its industrial revolution it had an empire. I’d say dropping to 16 is pretty fair given its size and influence today.

flir 2y ago

When I was a kid (80s) I knew old boys with lathes and mills and pillar drills at the bottom of the garden. They were the last generation, I think, of a tradition rooted in the Victorian era which informally transferred a lot of knowledge from one generation to the next. My pet theory is that their disappearance is tied closely to the cost of land. I see US-based hardware hobbyists' shops on YouTube, and I think "I couldn't even afford to build a shed that big". The tools themselves are often actually pretty cheap second hand at auction, because the demand is so low, but I live on the back of a postage stamp in comparison with those guys. (Another possibility is simply that software ate the world.)

qazxcvbnmlp 2y ago
Land is expensive in the areas people want to live. But yeah, tools are much cheaper, esp if you slowly grow over time.
rjsw 2y ago
My grandfather got a lathe and pillar drill as his retirement gift from work, he also taught me how to etch PCBs and build radios.
jillyboel 2y ago
It's insane how much space there is in America, and most Americans don't realize this beyond a simple "america big".
Theodores 2y ago
Blame the Thatcher Revolution and the sell-off of the council housing estates. Councils used to actually make money from housing, however, the revenue went back into building more homes, so more revenue. Rents were not extortionate or subsidised, however, if you were on benefits then you would get your rent covered. The council housing provided an option at a base price, private landlords could not compete if they also had to pay for the mortgage, at a time when interest rates were a lot higher. Once the council housing was sold off, there was no longer this base price, unless you wanted to spend five years on the list for a housing association, as in the privatised council housing estate. This change meant that the best place for your money was in property. Property was no longer a near-depreciating asset, house price inflation went through the roof, but was not part of the inflation index. Since then the economy has been that of rent-seeking. There is no point making stuff as you might as well sell the premises to a developer to convert into luxury flats, which then get bought by rent-seekers and rented out to people that would have had a full-feature council house in previous times. When a rent-seeker has income from one property, they can remortgage to buy another, then use leverage to buy more and more. Rent-seeking is not adding anything to the economy, no product is made. However, rent-seekers vote Conservative. In an economy where everyone has to pay more for the parasites that are the rent-seekers, the cost of labour goes up. This is just because people need more money to pay to have a roof over their head, not because they want gold taps. This is the root cause of the decline of the West, you are probably old enough to remember how this capital from rent-seeking spread out from London to even the slowest seaside town. Wherever it went, businesses stopped making stuff and started importing instead. Once that business of making stuff has gone, it never comes back. The real value is in making stuff even though there is plenty of profit in retail, 'no product is made'. Furthermore, it is not possible to stop someone from doing the same as you, buying widgets from China, marking them up and flogging them with an English manual. In the USA the situation is the same in the big cities. In the flyover states there is a different Ponzi scheme afoot, with vast tracts of suburbia built but without the long-term tax base to maintain the roads and other infrastructure indefinitely. So long as there is cheap oil and the dollar is the reserve currency, it all works with printing money, with the world taking the inflation hit, not the USA. The sheds you see full of toys are not in New York, they will be somewhere such as Florida or Texas.

constantcrying 2y ago

>but in the meantime, but manufacturing can still bring great income to many families How so? If you aren't willing to buy from China many products will become unavailable and the rest will go up 10x in price. Disentangling yourself from the global economic system is hard and painful, especially if you have just disentangled yourself from one super block.