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

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...)