Japan and the Birth of Modern Shipbuilding(construction-physics.com)
construction-physics.com
Japan and the Birth of Modern Shipbuilding
https://www.construction-physics.com/p/how-japan-invented-modern-shipbuilding
56 comments
> Something I wish was discussed in the article was the fact that shipbuilding salaries in Japan, while low compared to developed countries at the time, was around 160% the median salary a Japanese employee could demand in the post-war era [0] ... It appears that this incentivized higher skilled workers to work in the shipbuilding and steel industry in post-war Japan.
It would be interesting to use wage and salary controls to drive talented workers out of certain industries and into more productive ones. For instance, cap total compensation and benefits for people working in advertising (including adtech) at say, $130k/year. People working on cryptocurrency could be capped at 2x minimum wage. It's sometimes hard to identify industries that should be supported, but it seems like it would be much easier to identify the handful of well-compensated but problematic industries.
It would be interesting to use wage and salary controls to drive talented workers out of certain industries and into more productive ones. For instance, cap total compensation and benefits for people working in advertising (including adtech) at say, $130k/year. People working on cryptocurrency could be capped at 2x minimum wage. It's sometimes hard to identify industries that should be supported, but it seems like it would be much easier to identify the handful of well-compensated but problematic industries.
Japan, Korea, and China kind of did this, but not via direct wage and salary controls. Window guidance is the informal practice where government/finance officials tell banks which industries to prefer for loans. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Window_guidance
It only really works where capital markets are undeveloped or heavily restricted; and it does starve out the rest of the economy, which is bad for the not-chosen-few (e.g. South Korea's chaebols) and can also backfire if you end up being bad at picking winners.
It only really works where capital markets are undeveloped or heavily restricted; and it does starve out the rest of the economy, which is bad for the not-chosen-few (e.g. South Korea's chaebols) and can also backfire if you end up being bad at picking winners.
Window guidance doesn't have a great correlation with wage power, as was seen with the loss of shipbuilding capacity in Japan in the 1980s to South Korea as wages rose leading to automation (remember the whole Japanese "robots" trend).
It is good if your concern is relative domestic wages, since favored firms and industries can pay more if they have access to cheap credit.
It is hard to maintain that competitiveness as living standards rise and eventually window guidance starts running out of steam, as Japan discovered in the '90s and China is discovering now.
It is hard to maintain that competitiveness as living standards rise and eventually window guidance starts running out of steam, as Japan discovered in the '90s and China is discovering now.
> seems like it would be much easier to identify the handful of well-compensated but problematic industries
That would only incentivize a brain drain. A good example of this is software engineering in UK, Germany, Canada, South Korea, and Japan, as SWE salaries in those countries are not significantly different compared to other vocations.
Also, I'm not a fan of cryptocurrencies, but they are one of the few industries left in the US that incentivizes NAND-to-Tetris level knowledge, and it did help subsidize the GPU buildout that made foundational models easier to train cost effectively.
You can't "command economy" innovation - it can only be nudged.
The solution I've seen most industrial planners use is provide tax holidays and subsidizes for targeted industries, as this helps reduce the upfront cost of hiring, and does give wiggle room to raise compensation. Linking that with production, timeline locks, or even tariffs tends to help force an ecosystem to develop - which is what Japan used to build their shipbuilding and automotive industries in the post-war era.
That would only incentivize a brain drain. A good example of this is software engineering in UK, Germany, Canada, South Korea, and Japan, as SWE salaries in those countries are not significantly different compared to other vocations.
Also, I'm not a fan of cryptocurrencies, but they are one of the few industries left in the US that incentivizes NAND-to-Tetris level knowledge, and it did help subsidize the GPU buildout that made foundational models easier to train cost effectively.
You can't "command economy" innovation - it can only be nudged.
The solution I've seen most industrial planners use is provide tax holidays and subsidizes for targeted industries, as this helps reduce the upfront cost of hiring, and does give wiggle room to raise compensation. Linking that with production, timeline locks, or even tariffs tends to help force an ecosystem to develop - which is what Japan used to build their shipbuilding and automotive industries in the post-war era.
> Also, I'm not a fan of cryptocurrencies, but they are one of the few industries left in the US that incentivizes NAND-to-Tetris level knowledge,
And what does it do with that knowledge?
> and it did help subsidize the GPU buildout that made foundational models easier to train cost effectively.
Crypto and AI both use GPUs, but I'm not under the impression that AI people repurposed old crypto mines for anything (e.g. crypto mines used janky racks of consumer GPUs, AI typically uses specialized high-end equipment).
And what does it do with that knowledge?
> and it did help subsidize the GPU buildout that made foundational models easier to train cost effectively.
Crypto and AI both use GPUs, but I'm not under the impression that AI people repurposed old crypto mines for anything (e.g. crypto mines used janky racks of consumer GPUs, AI typically uses specialized high-end equipment).
> And what does it do with that knowledge?
Notice how I talked about HPC, distributed systems, and cybersecurity in my comment?
> I'm not under the impression that AI people repurposed old crypto mines for anything
The crypto boom helped incentivize the scaling out of GPU design and fabrication, just like how video games helped with the first iteration in the 2000s.
There's a reason the concept of "dual use technology" has gained currency
Notice how I talked about HPC, distributed systems, and cybersecurity in my comment?
> I'm not under the impression that AI people repurposed old crypto mines for anything
The crypto boom helped incentivize the scaling out of GPU design and fabrication, just like how video games helped with the first iteration in the 2000s.
There's a reason the concept of "dual use technology" has gained currency
>It's sometimes hard to identify industries that should be supported,
It's sometimes controversial to claim this industry or that industry should be pursued at a national level, but this isn't the same thing as difficult. It's just that politics gets in the way.
And yes, shipbuilding should be one of those industries we pursue.
For that matter, I think you may have nailed the one industry we should punish.
It's sometimes controversial to claim this industry or that industry should be pursued at a national level, but this isn't the same thing as difficult. It's just that politics gets in the way.
And yes, shipbuilding should be one of those industries we pursue.
For that matter, I think you may have nailed the one industry we should punish.
Amazon makes more money doing what it does, and buying its planes made by someone else, vs. making its own planes...
And if Amazon were to ever have to go to war with Boeing, which of those two companies would come out on top? Sometimes things are more expensive because they're actually worth it.
Should the United States buy all its planes from China because they can make those cheaper than we can domestically?
Should the United States buy all its planes from China because they can make those cheaper than we can domestically?
I'm reading this blog, and the debate regarding the role of industry vs deindustrialization came to mind...was decline of shipbuilding in the US due to better paying jobs doing less dangerous work elsewhere?
The US was never a commercial shipbuilding hub once the transition was made to metal ships. During the timber ship era, the huge quantities of quality lumber the US had meant that they were world class at shipbuilding, but metal ships? Not so much outside of direct production for the World Wars(1). I mean, the fact that the US passed the Jones Act in 1920 is a pretty strong signal that even then the US was not viable in commercial shipbuilding.
The US Navy, which has been tied for the largest or exclusively the largest in the world for over a century, meant that military shipbuilding was in a better state(2) but still not super competitive- few countries have ever bought the direct products of American yards- yards in the US mostly serve the USN and then sometimes the USN will transfer ships they don't need to other nations.
1: And even then, a whole lot of it was unskilled people learning by doing, and making mistakes.
2: There are many caveats, but it appears that British shipyards were probably more manpower efficient building warships than the US was in WW2. D.K. Brown discusses the evidence in _Nelson to Vanguard_. It's not perfectly clear- because hours were charged to contracts differently in the two countries, the fact that British ships charged fewer hours to a ship doesn't necessarily mean that they used fewer hours in actuality (while everyone counted laborers on a dock for hours, how do you handle hours spent doing accounts payable? Or material deliveries, or training? There are differences in how they were counted between countries, and Brown was unable to correct for them).
It is also true that the US produced warships faster chronologically, so it is possible that the US threw so many bodies at ship construction that they went past the point of manpower efficiency to get less time spent in the yards. But, overall, British shipbuilders seem to have been more manpower efficient than US yards during WW2, as far as warship production.
The US Navy, which has been tied for the largest or exclusively the largest in the world for over a century, meant that military shipbuilding was in a better state(2) but still not super competitive- few countries have ever bought the direct products of American yards- yards in the US mostly serve the USN and then sometimes the USN will transfer ships they don't need to other nations.
1: And even then, a whole lot of it was unskilled people learning by doing, and making mistakes.
2: There are many caveats, but it appears that British shipyards were probably more manpower efficient building warships than the US was in WW2. D.K. Brown discusses the evidence in _Nelson to Vanguard_. It's not perfectly clear- because hours were charged to contracts differently in the two countries, the fact that British ships charged fewer hours to a ship doesn't necessarily mean that they used fewer hours in actuality (while everyone counted laborers on a dock for hours, how do you handle hours spent doing accounts payable? Or material deliveries, or training? There are differences in how they were counted between countries, and Brown was unable to correct for them).
It is also true that the US produced warships faster chronologically, so it is possible that the US threw so many bodies at ship construction that they went past the point of manpower efficiency to get less time spent in the yards. But, overall, British shipbuilders seem to have been more manpower efficient than US yards during WW2, as far as warship production.
Construction Physics has a good discussion of this as well: https://www.construction-physics.com/p/why-cant-the-us-build...
One thing that really hurt US commercial shipbuilding after WW2 was the glut of surplus Liberty and Victory ships in circulation. Nobody was buying new ships for a long enough time that the shipyards couldn’t stay in business even if they tried.
One thing that really hurt US commercial shipbuilding after WW2 was the glut of surplus Liberty and Victory ships in circulation. Nobody was buying new ships for a long enough time that the shipyards couldn’t stay in business even if they tried.
That's based on the premise that we were a major blue water shipbuilder.
We weren't, as data from the mid-20th century showed [0]
Japan had a larger blue water shipbuilding capacity than the US by 1910 in both sail and steam. We were on par with newly independent and much poorer Greece (Greece's developmental indicators didn't catch up with Western Europe until the last 3-5 years).
[0] - https://www.vliz.be/imisdocs/publications/288698.pdf
We weren't, as data from the mid-20th century showed [0]
Japan had a larger blue water shipbuilding capacity than the US by 1910 in both sail and steam. We were on par with newly independent and much poorer Greece (Greece's developmental indicators didn't catch up with Western Europe until the last 3-5 years).
[0] - https://www.vliz.be/imisdocs/publications/288698.pdf
> That's based on the premise that we were a major blue water shipbuilder.
We were—during WW2.
We were—during WW2.
To be fair, we heavily invested in railroads for transcontinental transportation during that era so we didn't have much of a need for long distance seafaring until the World Wars.
To be extra fair, Japan was also heavily investing in railroads at the same time.
Not to the same level in the pre-WW2 era which is my point.
Please try to read my comments and let them sync in instead to immediately trying to find some point of contention.
Please try to read my comments and let them sync in instead to immediately trying to find some point of contention.
The US was never a major commercial shipbuilding hub aside from during WW2 when manufacturing capacity was "reallocated" to shipbuilding. We were a very insular regional power that concentrated on our continent and some archipelagos with limited strategic value until WW2.
It was the UK that was the center of commercial shipbuilding before the Japanese, Koreans, and Chinese took that mantle.
The US had a decent military shipbuilding industry, but they atrophed after the Cold War ended, and the incentive for naval warfare capacity receded until recently.
It was the UK that was the center of commercial shipbuilding before the Japanese, Koreans, and Chinese took that mantle.
The US had a decent military shipbuilding industry, but they atrophed after the Cold War ended, and the incentive for naval warfare capacity receded until recently.
WW2 ship building in the US was massive and the required infrastructure doesn’t just go away.
The US built over 3,600 cargo ships, 700+ tankers, and 1,300+ naval vessels, in a few years!
The US built over 3,600 cargo ships, 700+ tankers, and 1,300+ naval vessels, in a few years!
"At the height of the war the US was producing nearly 90% of the world’s ships. By the 1950s, it produced just over 2%"
That's an interesting take. I read the article and it sounds like the US invented modern shipbuilding during WW2, and the Japanese just copied it and ran with it. But ok.
The us invented modern management in wwii - but it was perfected in japan after the war. Ships were built all over to old management processes but modern management made a big difference in cost, time, and quaity.
Have you not heard of the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905)? It’s quite famous with historic naval battles and modern battleships. But ok.
Japan had modern steel battleships in 1904. Dumdedum123 is talking about modern post-1930s shipBUILDING techniques involving prefab subassemblies.
I'm just going off the article. Did you read it?
Same things with statistical process management and quality control.
DrNosferatu(3)
A similar relative difference didn't seem to exist in the Canada (which I'm using to extrapolate for the US) around that time [1].
It appears that this incentivized higher skilled workers to work in the shipbuilding and steel industry in post-war Japan. Essentially, shipbuilding in Japan in the 50s and 60s would have been the equivalent of being a Software Engineer in the US today, and it was treated as an engineering/STEM disciple [2] instead of as a blue collar semi-skilled discipline in the US.
I can safely say a similar trend happened in South Korea in the 1970s-80s as well according to one of my professors back in the day who specifically specialized in Korea and Japan policy and advised Hyundai and Samsung back then, which lead to a similar decrease in shipbuilding capacity in Japan.
Unsurprisingly, this trend can be seen to this day in any industry - be it chip design, VFX, battery manufacturing, etc.
I've noticed a similar trend in distributed systems/infra/os/networking/cybersecurity as well, where American schools skip teaching systems or architecture fundamentals in order to overindex on Theory/Applied Math whereas NAND-to-Tetris is the default philosophy in programs in Israel, India, and the CEE.
[0] - https://www.jstor.org/stable/2519602
[1] - https://publications.gc.ca/collections/collection_2017/statc...
[2] - https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1966/august/japan...