Us and Japan Case

You will remember that in an earlier lecture we saw that business and government are symbiotic (i.e. mutually supporting), and that one of the benefits which governments provide business is physical and social infrastructure. Networks which bind society physically include roads and bridges, rail systems, water and sewer pipes, electric cables, telephone wires, and optical fibres for internet communication. The things which these networks deliver, such as water, gas, information, and electricity may themselves also be government provided services which benefit both society and business. You may remember that when we were looking at ideology we noticed the recognition of the benefits of infrastructure in Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations (1776). You will also remember that I mentioned the example of the Post Office, and the group of British political social democratic theorists called Fabians who, in the late 1880s and early 1890s, argued that things like street lighting, water, and gas, could be more efficiently provided by city councils and other government agencies, than by private enterprise. Just as the Post Office was able to function at great efficiency because it was a monopoly run along strict functional lines, so too gas and other useful things could be provided cheaply, it was believed, by removing markets from the picture entirely and using a functional model which could supply all citizens and businesses equally. This way of providing certain services known as ‘public utilities’ or ‘essential services’ was so successful that last century it was adopted in all of the industrial countries to some extent, more so in the European countries and less so in the US and Japan.

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