Hacker News Reader

Comment by esskay | Hacker News Reader

Explain. Nobodys going without power.

We have expensive, potentially unreliable (if an interconnect fails we are completely fucked so certainly fragile), energy.

Energy is what allows modernity to function, we have made it so expensive that no one can make anything in Britain just in time for hard power and manufacturing to be really important again.

Chemicals, metals, pottery, glass,fertiliser etc are all basically impossible to do competitively in Britain.

Energy has only been expensive recently, and there has been zero issue with power supply beyond silly tabloid fear mongering. So between the 70s and lets say 10 years ago, the argument for expensive power really does not hold true.

UK has some of the highest costs of power in the world. There's a lot of demand destruction there, a lot of industries left. due to high costs.

Which industries? If you're going to make that claim be specific. The UK has deindustrialised since the 70s which was nothing to do with electricity costs or availability. Any recent industries leaving are not covered by the stats here so would be pretty irrelevant, which means you're not talking about those, you're talking about something else for it to cover the period between the 70s and now.

4,000 people lost their livelihoods in Hull last month with the owner explicitly citing electricity costs as the reason. More or less every single steel producer, and even refineries, are just gone.

Even parliament acknowledges the effect this has had: https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/139767/pdf/

That is the most astoundingly smug and tone-deaf question I have ever heard.

Yeah this doesn't answer the question does it. It's not even what this topic is about. Closing something a couple of months ago isnt moving the needle on the post literally talking about since the 1970s, which is the point I was very clear about making to hopefully avoid someones "well last month X happened" argument which as you full well know is nothing remotely to do with the topic at hand, however sad it may be that people have lost their jobs, which is also not the topic at hand.

Please debate in good faith.

What were the prices like relative to the rest of the world 20-40 years ago when most of that industry was offshored?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com