Governments by nature are wasteful, corrupt, and incompetent, sure, but is Japan really particularly bad? You could point to spectacular high speed rail failures in USA or a healthcare system which costs double per-capita as other developed countries for much worse outcomes in most objective measures of public health, incredibly expensive violent and ultimately failed attempts to "export democracy" to places like Afghanistan, and on and on.
So... yes maybe it does, but it seems misleading to make a comment like that unless you can say how it's particularly worse than any other government's waste and failure.
Healthcare is an immense government expenditure though, vastly, vastly bigger than your examples, and I would say US government pumping in a trillion dollars every year for a substandard result fits the your description pretty well.
> or claiming Japan as a whole is bad/worse,
Oh. Well then as I said your comment seemed a bit strange to me if it isn't notably worse than other countries, I thought it implied that Japan is notably bad, but if not then carry on.
> I'm simply stating that the Japanese government's industrial policy of trying to pick winners has a long track record of subsidizing losers instead. Any (recent-ish) counterexamples you'd like to point out?
Counterexamples for what? I didn't say Japan's government isn't incompetent and/or doesn't take risks on investing in long shots, like other governments, so I'm not claiming there is no such long history. What I was asking is what makes Japan particularly bad, but you say it's not so I don't really have more to say.
Their past policy in favour of Canon/Nikon would look like a different story if the US government had decided that one of C/N could have EUV tech instead of giving it to ASML/SVG.
Your point is generally pretty decent, though. It's a pity you're having so many responses that are so low-brow. Industrial policy isn't healthcare etc. and the performative outrage on this site is getting quite tiresome.
There's of course so-called white hydrogen:
https://hydrogeneurope.eu/excitement-grows-about-natural-h2-...
But known reserves are really small compared to those of natural gas.
You can make it from electrolysis, but it's much more expensive to do so, so that won't happen.
* Central Queensland Hydrogen Project (CQ-H2)
A large-scale project that aims to produce 200 tonnes of green hydrogen per day by 2029 and 800 tonnes per day by 2031. The project will supply hydrogen to an ammonia production facility in Gladstone and may eventually export it to Japan
A commercial-scale hydrogen electrolyser project at Yara's Pilbara fertilizer plant that is currently under construction.
* ATCO-Hydrogen-Blending-Project
* Australian Renewable Energy Hub
* Boolathana Project.
It's the exact same story for any other subsidized technology at the beginning. If it were already cost competitive then the switch would likely already have happened. One of the common arguments against electric cars used to be that you were still burning coal or natural gas at the end of the day.
The technology hasn't remained static either. I barely follow hydrogen stuff but I recall there were several notable advancements in catalysis from various precursors over the past several years.
It's exactly the sort of medium to long term gamble that it makes sense for a government to invest in but likely doesn't for a corporation on its own.
I'm not convinced by that. The cheaper electricity gets, say the way PV is absurdly cheap these days, the less the inefficiency of electrolysis matters.
What doesn't change with cheaper PV etc. is that hydrogen is so hard to work with or store, both as a gas and as a liquid.
I can't rely on my gut feelings or comparisons to e.g. the space shuttle external fuel tank to say if these problems can be "solved" well-enough at an acceptable cost, as I've only got a GCSE in chemistry from the turn of the millennium.
No, you can also do just enough to slumber away in mediocracy forever.
Japanese companies and institutions hate sharing knowledge (read: trade secrets) with each other.
So if the Japanese govt. is going to 'bet' on anything, then betting on a segment where Japanese inputs are critical, and where Japanese companies had led the world previously, is a safer bet than a segment where there is no history or inputs.
Right at the moment I assume that the Japanese government is probably still kicking itself for not spending whatever it took to keep Nikon's EUV-machine development going: apparently Nikon wasn't that far behind ASML. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_OOta7Y6Ik Likely it's determined not to make that mistake again; and it's not as if the US is in any position to complain about Japan having an activist industrial policy in semiconductors at the moment.
Bureucratic and indecisive nature of managing government employees are often brought up as a contributing factor, which applies to every government decisions ever, so this assertion do need citations to be a valid point in a discussion.
Hydrogen fuel is strategic because if it has even any chance to succeed it means a huge escspe route from China's influence, as the whole EV stack relies on them (getting rid of petroleum fuel is of course the same deal, Japan has no oil). That's basically a low risk high return bet. We're seeing how hybrids are still fairing better that full EVs and Tesla hasn't displaced Toyota either.
Computing standard is the same: they've been stuck with US standards for eternity now, up to iOS and android eating the national market when they had a decade long lead. Not pouring money into any half viable bet would be crazy.
So... they have working bullet trains.
The second most valuable is #25 by market cap.