3 ms·

https://www.jreast.co.jp/e/environment/pdf_2017/p129-131.pdf https://www.jreast.co.jp/e/environment/pdf_2017/p129-131.pdf At least if you look at this flowchart

by rtpg 5y ago

https://www.jreast.co.jp/e/environment/pdf_2017/p129-131.pdf https://www.jreast.co.jp/e/environment/pdf_2017/p129-131.pdf At least if you look at this flowchart on the second page of JR East what I see is "all the debt was placed into the JNR settlement program, then a small fraction of it was taken on by the privatized structures, roughly half of that foisted onto the public, another half covered by sales of land and the share sales." I don't believe that the point of train lines is to be profitable (just like it's not the point of parks to be profitable, or roads etc), so "wow look at the tax burden" is ... fine for me. Public good, etc. The part I find objectionable is that there were a bunch of assets owned by the public that were transferred to private ownership! Maybe stuff needs to be broken up, maybe you do need to pay people a lot of money to come work on these hard problems, and privatization is one way of tackling this. But permanent ownership transfer of goods instead of, I don't know, just getting over it and paying public servants good money to do a good job, does leave a bad taste in my mouth. EDIT: I do think you're right about the contents of the debt though, at least that PDF seems to imply the debt is not from Shinkansen construction.

sanxiyn 5y ago
The flowchart shows privatized JR assumed 40% of debt. I don't think "small fraction" is the right description. By the way, the flowchart was the plan, but it didn't go according to the plan. Land sales never happened for complicated reasons. I think you are moving the goalpost. Yes, privatization itself can be distasteful. But Shinkansen was privatized, not handed out. JR paid for the privilege, and it was fair price (at least it was market price). With the benefit of hindsight, it can be argued it should have been more, but JR took real risk. Money printing wasn't the foregone conclusion. I agree JNR could have been normalized without privatization, and probably should have. On the other hand, I don't think it was about paying public servants. Normalization of JR was mostly about making obvious but unpopular decisions, and that's in fact one thing the private does better than the democratically accountable public.
- rtpg 5y ago
  Alright, that's a totally fair argument. And like I said, JR works well now. There are perhaps arguments around the edges about opportunity costs, but there is now a healthy structure in place (at least it seems to be so from the outside). And there are trains that work! Hard to argue that the overall results are bad. (I do think that "paying a fair price" is not a great argument when you are the central government and can print your currency, but Japan is not the US or Russia and it was the 1960s...)

by rtpg 5y ago

sanxiyn 5y ago

The flowchart shows privatized JR assumed 40% of debt. I don't think "small fraction" is the right description. By the way, the flowchart was the plan, but it didn't go according to the plan. Land sales never happened for complicated reasons. I think you are moving the goalpost. Yes, privatization itself can be distasteful. But Shinkansen was privatized, not handed out. JR paid for the privilege, and it was fair price (at least it was market price). With the benefit of hindsight, it can be argued it should have been more, but JR took real risk. Money printing wasn't the foregone conclusion. I agree JNR could have been normalized without privatization, and probably should have. On the other hand, I don't think it was about paying public servants. Normalization of JR was mostly about making obvious but unpopular decisions, and that's in fact one thing the private does better than the democratically accountable public.

rtpg 5y ago
Alright, that's a totally fair argument. And like I said, JR works well now. There are perhaps arguments around the edges about opportunity costs, but there is now a healthy structure in place (at least it seems to be so from the outside). And there are trains that work! Hard to argue that the overall results are bad. (I do think that "paying a fair price" is not a great argument when you are the central government and can print your currency, but Japan is not the US or Russia and it was the 1960s...)