Countries like Japan seem to make policy that serves the people.

Other countries decisions serve politicians, corporates, the rich, and maybe possibly finally, the citizens.

Here in Melbourne a city of 5 million people we don’t have a train from the airport to the city despite decades of political talk about it. But why not? Because the Airport Coporation makes vast unfathomable profit on car parking. What’s most important? Just look around.

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gorfian_robot 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

like many other places, there is a airport bus in Melbourne as I recall. there is (or was) a train from Melbourne to Canberra too (with a short bus transfer on the Canberra side). it was very difficult to figure out how to buy a ticket for it!

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thegreatpeter 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

most of the japanese railway system is private. their 2 largest companies are some of the largest publicly traded companies in the world.

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presentation 7 hours ago | parent [-]

Works in progress also had a great article recently (also discussed on hacker news) about how Japanese railways are private, profit earning real estate development corporations. [1]

Unfortunately, people from western countries have very negative views toward the privatization of mass transit despite the wild success that Japan has experienced. The model makes so much sense: if trains are just a way to get people to the real estate that you developed, then you’re going to make sure that the trains AND the destinations are really nice, which also turns out to be very lucrative (at least in densely populated areas) as a cherry on top.

And even worse, like this commenter above alludes to, it is trendy in the West to believe that real estate developers are evil, and that corporations that make money are sucking the life out of society. This kind of degrowth populism pretty much guarantees that the successful Japanese model is out of reach for most countries, because it is exactly the pursuit of profit that makes Japan’s system so nice - not some edicts from a benevolent and extremely capable government.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47762060

	▲	bluefirebrand 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> Unfortunately, people from western countries have very negative views toward the privatization of mass transit despite the wild success that Japan has experienced Japanese culture would frown heavily on enshittifying the transit experience to earn more profit. Western culture mass transit is already often shitty, and I cannot imagine how shit it would become if a for profit corporation took it over and started to squeeze it to make more money