- Fares are regulated in Japan. In the UK fare growth has staggeringly outpaced inflation and there's a complex structure to incentivize travel at certain times. Compare this with Swiss trains - an incredibly successful nationalized system - that also uses mostly flat rates.
- JR group companies are heavily involved in real estate both in station shopping centers/services and easement lands. Construction is rapid and relatively easy in Japan, so they have an interest in areas where people might be moving to and providing affordable transportation in and out.
- The UK's incentive structure means there's no real reason for operators to invest in providing good service. They don't own the tracks (Network Rail does) and their franchise might simply not be renewed. They're really just in it to make a buck, while JR companies are more interested in developing areas around their lines for people to live in.
- The Japanese government took on all of the old JR's debt.
- The shinkansen is incredibly profitable, which subsidizes other lines, and has to constantly compete with air travel.
Thanks - I hope that gives you some ideas next time it comes up. I'm gonna lib out here with a little analysis.
The JR/British Rail disparity is an apparently unique case due to their leadership's expansion of scope and their very much a different conception of capital's responsibilities toward society and a uniquely bad design feature of the British Rail privatization scheme that not only created a disincentive for well-run companies, but also erased the possibility of a development focus and crushed space for smaller private railways. And JR isn't perfect: JR Hokkaido is constantly in trouble because it's difficult to operate profitable services in a sparsely populated, relatively rugged location. We can find other points of caution from other privatization schemes. Let's use the libs to own the libs:
- Japan Post (to hopefully crush any Orientalism that might seep in with the praise for JR) was embroiled in a huge predatory insurance sales scandal midway through the government's long-term divestment plan, putting the project on hold for years. Without regulatory oversight, this would have not only been a disaster for the postal service, but also for the massive postal bank it operates as a wholly owned subsidiary.
- Many of Egypt's privatization efforts have been undone due to mismanagement iirc.
- Deutsche Post/DHL and Deutsche Telekom are two great examples of successful privatization almost majority owned by the state directly and through the KfW development bank. Orange s.a. (France Telecom) is also largely owned by the state. All of these firms have expanded immensely and provide not only value to public stakeholders, but also :cringe: shareholder value.
- Royal Mail, in the meantime, was fully divested (another popular target for re-nationalization) has generally been trading below its IPO price.
- In the US public utilities districts and telecom co-ops are popular and provide excellent service as community owned enterprises. Rural telcos in partnership with government are able to roll out high-speed fiber to small, rural communities whereas huge incumbent monopolies (like AT&T or Verizon) provide miserable quality of service using aging technology in massively populated areas while still receiving government money for similar purposes that they simply don't follow through on. When the area is no longer profitable enough, they divest as part of a restructuring and you just have to pray the spinoff company and their private equity masters might upgrade your service. California's PG&E is so mismanaged that they can't keep the power on in certain events due to short-sighted infrastructure investments.
- If you want to measure an enterprise based on the profit it generates, the US Postal Service is extremely profitable if they were able to follow the same retirement rules as other government agencies.
OK I'm gonna go play Workers and Resources or something now to get all this liberalism off me
successful privatization almost majority owned by the state
:stalin-stressed:
It's a bit of a fuck, yes, but it seems like a solid argument against privatization is that a) it really only seems to succeed wildly when the state or the public still has enough oversight to accomplish the public service role and b) it's not driven solely by fetishization of quarterly performance. At that point you can whittle down to an aesthetic argument the difference between a :agony-deep: public-private partnership and a worker-owned co-op. Once you start defining a radicalizing concept in terms their ghoul minds can understand, you can start wearing cracks in the weaker ideologues. It's entryism for WSJ monsters.
JR group companies are heavily involved in real estate both in station shopping centers/services and easement lands. Construction is rapid and relatively easy in Japan, so they have an interest in areas where people might be moving to and providing affordable transportation in and out.
The UK’s incentive structure means there’s no real reason for operators to invest in providing good service. They don’t own the tracks (Network Rail does) and their franchise might simply not be renewed. They’re really just in it to make a buck, while JR companies are more interested in developing areas around their lines for people to live in.
This is the problem with railways and capitalism, they cost too much to be profitable from fares alone, but the additional economic benefits are enormous. As a result of most railway companies either don't own the infrastructure and the government has to pay out or they do what is described above and become landlords. When this doesn't happen as is the case where I live, the government just underfunds the railways and as a result, we end up with the most cars per capita of any country in the world.