It’s an index fund. It must follow the index. They’re forced to buy any company in the SP500.

They are buying it at IPO pricing

yeah, by using codex

perhaps they tried that and the staff wasn't willing to be trained. have you ever worked at a company like that of that size?

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

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

> 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

Did you read what I said? The whole Japanese system is for profit and the one of the biggest reasons for Japan’s system being so pleasant is that it is done for commercial purposes.

If the incentives are right American companies can make good things, but usually they are not so because of poor policy.

> If the incentives are right American companies can make good things, but usually they are not so because of poor policy

I disagree. The incentives are never right for American companies because the only incentive they care about is making money at all costs. They don't even care about their reputations anymore if they can sell their rep for money

That's the point, you need to make making money = improving society. If you think that's impossible in the USA, then the USA is doomed and maybe you should look for the door. I am not that pessimistic.

I believe most of it was sold off after it was built, am I wrong?

what are the dodgy meds? it provides a discount at the pharmacy if you pay cash and skip insurance. are you from here?

have you seen some of the websites they've developed? they're actually quite nice. maybe joe hasn't gotten to mobile yet

edit: oh wait, thats https://ndstudio.gov/

"Accessibility Matters" they chortle between giant images of text https://ndstudio.gov/posts/accessibility-matters

“I absolutely agree that consumers and wage earners should not be exploited by the use of their data,” he said. “But it’s still overly broad and it’s still overly vague in very important parts. And I believe it’s overly simplistic in its definition of wage setting.”

That's standard conservative speak for "don't interfere with business practices". "Overly broad" is just a way to shut down discussion.

That’s juicy coming from the current Republican Party.

Tesla’s manuals are all online and many of the parts sell for cost plus. You may be thinking of Ford and Toyota