JК
Dogs and Demons :: Керр Алекс
Страница: 256 из 270The JPNIC set to work right away, putting up the same barriers to outsiders and upstart businesses that we find in older cartels. For example, the JPNIC does not approve addresses unless they use Japanese Internet providers-despite global guidelines worldwide that say local authorities shall show «no preferential treatment for customers of a particular data network.» It's the old game of using a cartel to keep the foreigners out. Meanwhile, the JPNIC raised registration fees to the point where it costs four times more to list a new domain than it does in the United States. The result of battening down the windows to the Internet- the very room that everyone thought was going to bring fresh air into Japanese industry – is that by 1998 Japan had only 0.3 percent the number of domains in the United States, and ranked twenty-first in the world for domain names per capita. Multiply this cozy cartel by a million, and you'll get a sense of the complexity and power of the system. Seeking to reform the gigantic structure of the bureaucracy is a project overwhelming in its scale, involving nothing less than a radical change in social mores; the entire country would be turned upside down and inside out. That is exactly what Japan's leaders dread: they fear that if they make too many changes the whole jerry-built edifice of bureaucratic management will collapse and the nation will sink into anarchy. This anxiety acts as a powerful brake against change. For the moment, Madame Defarge faces a very long wait.
There has been much talk in recent years of Kaikaku, « reform,» and while the bureaucracy has made a few timid steps toward reform, especially in finance and trade, Kaikaku is hampered by one major flaw: it aims, by and large, to shore up the status quo. Bureaucrats find ways, in classic Dogs and Demons fashion, to make small, nonessential changes, rather than tackle serious structural problems both in the industries they control and in their own systems of management. The phrase Kisei Kanwa, used for «deregulation,» is highly symbolic, for it means «relaxation of the rules.» It does not imply a discarding of the rules.
Here's how it works. Gas prices in Japan average 2.7 times world levels due to a law forbidding direct import. After 1996, deregulation allowed JAL, the national airline, to buy fuel abroad – but JAL cannot use this gas on domestic routes, and sulfur- and lead-content standards are designed to exclude South Korean gas. Contractors, pressured by the cartels they belong to, will not unload shipments bought through newly opened channels. Even after deregulation, foreign gas still cannot enter Japan directly.
In 1997, Japan finally legalized transplants from brain-dead patients.
There has been much talk in recent years of Kaikaku, « reform,» and while the bureaucracy has made a few timid steps toward reform, especially in finance and trade, Kaikaku is hampered by one major flaw: it aims, by and large, to shore up the status quo. Bureaucrats find ways, in classic Dogs and Demons fashion, to make small, nonessential changes, rather than tackle serious structural problems both in the industries they control and in their own systems of management. The phrase Kisei Kanwa, used for «deregulation,» is highly symbolic, for it means «relaxation of the rules.» It does not imply a discarding of the rules.
Here's how it works. Gas prices in Japan average 2.7 times world levels due to a law forbidding direct import. After 1996, deregulation allowed JAL, the national airline, to buy fuel abroad – but JAL cannot use this gas on domestic routes, and sulfur- and lead-content standards are designed to exclude South Korean gas. Contractors, pressured by the cartels they belong to, will not unload shipments bought through newly opened channels. Even after deregulation, foreign gas still cannot enter Japan directly.
In 1997, Japan finally legalized transplants from brain-dead patients.