Heritad privileges are a thing in China before. Look at the president who is the son of a (fallen) high politician.

Depends on the area. German speaking areas and Eastern Europe do use lots of potato. Even the collagial name for German is potato

I'm not sure about other countries. There is a culture refuse to throw away books in Germany. People would put on the streets for free (I found two interesting books with this method).

Prices collapsed, too. Sorry, this is just bad nostalgia. It was really bad if you reqd the details.

Compared to the state owned Deutsch bahn or pre competition trenitalia Japanese railways are quiet good.

(There is plenty of examples for good or bad private or state owned railways. It's just not black and white)