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> Are Japanese high speed trains build by private investors? Early shinkansen lines were built by Japanese National Railways, a state-owned enterprise; current

> Are Japanese high speed trains build by private investors? Early shinkansen lines were built by Japanese National Railways, a state-owned enterprise; currently they are operated by Japan Railways Group, a private company. Certainly there is still a lot of government integration/interference with their operation, but JR won't, for example, build a shinkansen line which they know will never be able to pay for itself. At any rate there is much less of an expectation that large infrastructure projects will be over schedule and over budget and that's just the way things are. > Are American interstate highways? Of course not, and that's why highways are prone to the exact same schedule and budget overruns. > Highways are build by the government because they are enablers of society. Society can operate just fine without government.

arethuza 6y ago
"Society can operate just fine without government." Any examples you could cite to support that assertion?
- ClumsyPilot 6y ago
  One with Feudal lords, perhaps?
  - arethuza 6y ago
    Didn't feudal societies typically have kings who were the ultimate central power and who, in theory at least, only answered to God?
    - ClumsyPilot 6y ago
      But if that's government, then so is having a tribal chief. What is this society without government meant to be,some kind of anarchy-heaven?
- Cyberdog 6y ago
  Do you want to kill your neighbors and rob the convenience store down the street? If the government were to disappear right now and there were no more government-imposed consequences for doing so, would your answer to this question change? Don't you think most people in society would answer the same way?
mjburgess 6y ago
You realise that the failure of these "government projects" is routinely down to their hiring private companies to manage and execute them? These arent "government projects". They are private projects paid for by the tax payer. They fail precisely because of attitudes of this kind: private companies interests are not aligned with taxpayers; and people like you have led to an exodus of talent and skill from governments. The 90s in the UK saw massive amounts of contracting out of IT, and huge amounts of wasted money as private companies rinsed the state. Since 2010s the gov has been dramatically expanding its high-talent IT capability, and routinely delivering best-in-class IT systems. The hollowing out of the state is what causes projects of this kind to fail. The people "stealing taxpayer money" are the private interests.
- presentation 6y ago
  Eh I don’t totally buy that. While in theory it would be nice if trains and the like were a purely public good, every transit agency in the USA has consistently failed to deliver. Most of the Asian train systems aside from the Chinese ones - Hong Kong MTR, the privatized Japanese lines and so on - tend to be private companies which, unlike the US systems, derive their profits not from the train lines themselves but buy building giant shopping/apartment/office complexes on top of stations, which makes a ton of sense - people ride a train to go some where, so make the train stations be the places they want to go to, and you will be heavily incentivized to make your trains very efficient at moving people. The Japanese system under JR originally was a national one but it ultimately got a lot more efficient after privatization, not before. I think that the incentive structures in the US are super messed up, and while it may be possible for the government to operate systems effectively I don’t see a politically viable way to unravel those messed up incentives.
- Cyberdog 6y ago
  > You realise that the failure of these "government projects" is routinely down to their hiring private companies to manage and execute them? Okay, so then why do governments keep contracting with these failing companies? Why don't the contracts include stop work orders or penalties for projects that go out of control? Where does the buck stop?
igravious 6y ago
Ron Swanson, is that you?

arethuza 6y ago

"Society can operate just fine without government." Any examples you could cite to support that assertion?

ClumsyPilot 6y ago
One with Feudal lords, perhaps?
- arethuza 6y ago
  Didn't feudal societies typically have kings who were the ultimate central power and who, in theory at least, only answered to God?
  - ClumsyPilot 6y ago
    But if that's government, then so is having a tribal chief. What is this society without government meant to be,some kind of anarchy-heaven?
Cyberdog 6y ago
Do you want to kill your neighbors and rob the convenience store down the street? If the government were to disappear right now and there were no more government-imposed consequences for doing so, would your answer to this question change? Don't you think most people in society would answer the same way?

mjburgess 6y ago

You realise that the failure of these "government projects" is routinely down to their hiring private companies to manage and execute them? These arent "government projects". They are private projects paid for by the tax payer. They fail precisely because of attitudes of this kind: private companies interests are not aligned with taxpayers; and people like you have led to an exodus of talent and skill from governments. The 90s in the UK saw massive amounts of contracting out of IT, and huge amounts of wasted money as private companies rinsed the state. Since 2010s the gov has been dramatically expanding its high-talent IT capability, and routinely delivering best-in-class IT systems. The hollowing out of the state is what causes projects of this kind to fail. The people "stealing taxpayer money" are the private interests.

presentation 6y ago
Eh I don’t totally buy that. While in theory it would be nice if trains and the like were a purely public good, every transit agency in the USA has consistently failed to deliver. Most of the Asian train systems aside from the Chinese ones - Hong Kong MTR, the privatized Japanese lines and so on - tend to be private companies which, unlike the US systems, derive their profits not from the train lines themselves but buy building giant shopping/apartment/office complexes on top of stations, which makes a ton of sense - people ride a train to go some where, so make the train stations be the places they want to go to, and you will be heavily incentivized to make your trains very efficient at moving people. The Japanese system under JR originally was a national one but it ultimately got a lot more efficient after privatization, not before. I think that the incentive structures in the US are super messed up, and while it may be possible for the government to operate systems effectively I don’t see a politically viable way to unravel those messed up incentives.
Cyberdog 6y ago
> You realise that the failure of these "government projects" is routinely down to their hiring private companies to manage and execute them? Okay, so then why do governments keep contracting with these failing companies? Why don't the contracts include stop work orders or penalties for projects that go out of control? Where does the buck stop?

igravious 6y ago

Ron Swanson, is that you?