alt Hacker NewsThis article is dishonest about the level of privatization in the JR's.
Yes, they're private companies, and they do diversification like investing in real estate around their rail cooridors to grow towns and grab people looking to do some shopping in their adjacent department store as passengers are walking through the stations. This is transit-oriented development at its best. (Also, ask google why land property lines in the US western states often look like big checkerboards)
But there's no mention of the Japan Railway Construction, Transport and Technology Agency (JRTT). That's the government entity that builds many new Shinkansen lines. It then leases them to the JR companies at a fixed rate for 30 years. This keeps massive construction costs off the private companies' balance sheets.
Or when they do need large capital spends, there's no mention of the Fiscal Investment and Loan Program (FILP) which provides loans in the form of low-interest credit backed by government guarantees. Their creditors are effectively lending to the Japaneese government, not the JR company.
Is that kind of system really privatized? It's hybridized at best, and it shows that you really need government support of some sort to push country-scale infrastructure like this forward. Sorry free-market absolutists.
It is not at all dishonest to talk about their privatization.
It’s dishonest to hand wave it away while pretending that because there are government controls for construction and financing that it would go even better if it was more government or “more hybridized”. With no source, just opinion.
No one that has ever had to switch blue to red to green in toyko just cash, buying a new ticket at each stop only to go a couple miles, has ever forgotten how privatized Japans railways are.
I expected to see comments about how good it is, how most people love it, how it’s highly privatized, and of course about how to make it better with more government.