Comments by "Tony Wilson" (@tonywilson4713) on "" video.

  1. I'm an Australian engineer who works in control systems and automation. Up until 2005 I worked in our manufacturing sector before shifting over to our mining and resources sector. I built quite a few production cells and manufacturing lines for our car industry. Without doubt he could be just as easily describing the Australian auto sector as much as the British. - our unions did lots of stupid things all through the 70s that had lasting effects all the way to the industries demise. - there were a string of terrible management decisions. - the Government support was wasted in many case by a combination of bad management and bad unionism. - the neoliberal economists had the moronic concept that unemployed people like being unemployed because they can by cheaply made goods from China and other Asian nations. Basically its a was COMBINATION of these things NOT any one of them although I will say that the neoliberal economists ended up being the most destructive because instead of actually trying to solve the problems they shipped them overseas and replaced them with new problems. They didn't just do it to vehicle manufacturing they did it across the ENTIRE economy. All through the 1990s they told our governments to privatise everything including the energy sector telling everyone that "Competition would deliver better services at lower costs." IT DIDN'T and we now have the same issues facing many other countries. We have things like high inflation caused by supply chain issues, high house prices caused by the availability of cheap money and high energy costs caused by some of the stupidest government policies in history. Sorry for the rant, but I will bet you've heard some of it already because its the same story across the entire Western hemisphere.
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  2.  @johnburns4017  You've just described the most important thing with any of it. BALANCE When management gets the balance right its brilliant. When it fails you can get all sorts of stuff happen and some of it doesn't show up for decades. Sorry this is a bit longish, but I think its worth your time Right now Australia and a lot of other countries have this almost insane situation that's at the heart of the energy crisis and NOBODY anywhere wants to talk about it because its a major management failure that's been gestating for over 25 years and is now metastasising into a death spiral. Basic supply demand economics say if supply does not meet demand prices go up. The demand for basic services like water & energy are directly proportional to population. If your population goes up 10, 20, 30% then it follows those demand goes up 10, 20, 30%. AND if there's no extra supply then prices GO UP. Its pretty damn simple. Part of the whole Reaganomics, Thatcherism neoliberal economics approach was to privatise anything and everything including water & power, BECAUSE the private sector has better MANGERS. But according to Milton Freidman those private mangers have only 1 duty, delivering as much profit as possible to the owners and go hard at it because every 3 months there's a quarterly report to those owners. So if you are a manager and go and spend a few billion on a new thumping big power station it will increase supply across the market and drive both prices and profits down, which won't look good on the next quarterly statement. So the only new power stations have been SMALL that could take up some of the demand WITHOUT lowering prices. There have been almost no large scale bulk supply power stations built anywhere in the developed world since the 1990s. Now that many of the older power stations are being closed because they are too old to keep working the energy supply is collapsing and driving prices sky high. The energy crisis isn't bad management through incompetence its bad management through design. Here's the catastrophe coming. Australia is about to turn off 5 of its biggest power stations after already turning 1 off along with 4 smaller power stations. As of this moment we do not have a single proposal on the table anywhere let alone anything being considered or under construction. When I recently checked California and France are in just as much trouble. At least Britain has Hinkley Point C under construction it just wont be ready until 2027/28. Again sorry its a long reply but it really is BAD MANAGEMENT THROUGH DESIGN.
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  3.  @johnburns4017  Absolutely true and we did EXACTLY the same in Australia. Who owns the power stations now? What's happened to our power bills when we were all promised that "competition would give better services at lower costs?" About 18 months ago in a very similar discussion to this a Romanian interjected at one point yelling as best he could at the rest of us about how Western capitalists had come to Romania and told them to privatise their power sector because "competition would give better services at lower costs" and they did it and now they have blackouts and power bills double what they were. Just like with manufacturing (including cars) the entire Western Hemisphere is beset with BAD management, except its not bad management through incompetence its bad management through design. Every government policy has 1 question it must answer no matter what party is in control at any given moment. "What do the billionaires want?"
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  4.  @johnburns4017  On management its one of the almost idiotic debates economists have made over the last 40+ years. BAD management is BAD management no matter if its in the private or government sectors. Here in Australia our government funded national broadband system was supposed to cost $20 Billion and has so far cost $52B. Just one of our main gas projects, Chevron's Gorgon project went more than $15B over budget. Other gas projects also went billions over budget as have some of our mining and public infrastructure projects. BAD management is BAD management. My degree is in aerospace and when I was doing my degree Challenger happened. There was an amazing letter published by the President of the AIAA in response to calls to defund NASA. They had an independent assessment on Apollo commissioned. That assessment said that Apollo was the most successful INVESTMENT in human history. Just from TAX from the industries that were able to use the technology spin-offs the US people had made just on $9 for every $1 spent. Because of those technologies that number has grown exponentially since that late 80s. Apollo is the gold medal case study for anyone wanting to do a project of almost any type.
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  5. I'm an Australian engineer who works in control systems and automation. Up until 2005 I worked in our manufacturing sector before shifting over to our mining and resources sector. I built quite a few production cells and manufacturing lines for our car industry. Without doubt he could be just as easily describing the Australian auto sector as much as the British. - our unions did lots of stupid things all through the 70s that had lasting effects all the way to the industries demise. - there were a string of terrible management decisions. - the Government support was wasted in many case by a combination of bad management and bad unionism. - the neoliberal economists had the moronic concept that unemployed people like being unemployed because they can by cheaply made goods from China and other Asian nations. Basically its a was COMBINATION of these things NOT any one of them although I will say that the neoliberal economists ended up being the most destructive because instead of actually trying to solve the problems they shipped them overseas and replaced them with new problems. They didn't just do it to vehicle manufacturing they did it across the ENTIRE economy. All through the 1990s they told our governments to privatise everything including the energy sector telling everyone that "Competition would deliver better services at lower costs." IT DIDN'T and we now have the same issues facing many other countries. We have things like high inflation caused by supply chain issues, high house prices caused by the availability of cheap money and high energy costs caused by some of the stupidest government policies in history. Sorry for the rant, but I will bet you've heard some of it already because its the same story across the entire Western hemisphere.
    1