The Sacred Cow Industry

It seems like every country has its own scared cow industries that its government would go all out to protect. In the United States, these industries include agriculture, steel and the defence industry. Only yesterday, I read that a Republican Senator (why am I not surprised that this kind of rubbish thing is always engineered by the Republicans?) wanted to kill a bill related to the prevention of bird flu endemic and other such viruses so that the same amount of money could be used for a bill that would benefit the defence industry.

In the case of Singapore, the sacred cow industry appears to be our public transport industry. It is obvious that the government has spared no efforts to protect the public transport industry, in this case the duopoly SBS Transit and SMRT and ensure that every year they would turn in healthy profits. In the same year, we have witnessed the PTC approved the hike in fares despite widespread protest (no demonstrations of course) and the recent ridiculous criminalization of cheating on bus fares, which could earn the unfortunate a jail sentence. It is little wonder that Singapore's draconian laws has become the butt of jokes worldwide. Not too long ago, I saw the trailer of a Taiwanese variety show in which the host asked Stephanie Sun, "I want to ask you a question: in Singapore would you be caned for farting?" Well, maybe not at the moment, but if in the future our government can find a good enough reason for it, we might just get such a sentence. An example could be breaking wind on public transport and causing other commuters to alight prematurely and costing losses for the bus and MRT companies. SBS Transit and SMRT would then make some kind of projection and said that people breaking wind on MRTs and buses have led to losses in revenue of about $9 million annually.

Talking about losses in revenue, I must applaud the effort of a reader for TODAY, who contributed an article that showed his guess of how our public transport companies arrived at the $9 million revenue loss a year (he has to do it for them because these companies refused to divulge how they came to that figure, perhaps it is some "industry secret" like the recipe for Coke). According to his logical calculation, this must work out to something like more than 1200 commuters cheating on fares every hour every day. So it looks like if the transport companies are right, we are a nation of despicable cheaters.

I wonder too if the $9 million revenue loss a year is net of the undeserved revenue earned each year from all those commuters who incurred maximum fares when they forgot to tap their EZlink cards when they alighted from buses or when the machines malfunctioned. Logically, they should also include the revenue gained from all these overcharging, and if so it would mean that more people are cheating every hour which make Singaporeans even more despicable. If this extra revenue is not included in the calculation, then the $9 million loss must be exaggerated.

To go further back, I am still very much curious as to what the PTC role is. From what I can see, it appears to merely exist for the sake of rubber stamping approvals for fare hikes. In the public transport industry, where there is a monopoly, the PTC should be playing a more active role as regulator, to ensure that commuters are protected from the exploitative monopoly rather than helping them earn more profits. Yes, I know that there are TWO transport companies so some people at the top would object to classification of the public transport industry as been monopolized. But fact is, SMRT and SBS Transit have arranged themselves in such a way that they really are serving different routes so that there is no competition at all. Thus technically, they really are monopolies. Since I have established that they are operating like monopolies, the PTC should treat them as such and be more active in regulating them, for example, during periods of economic downturn, the PTC should have the rights to force transport companies to lower their fares. But as we all know, fares can only go one direction and that is upwards.

Singapore has come this far largely because the government has always been very pro-business or rather pro-corporation in its mindset. This is a strength but yet we all also know that anything done to the extreme is always bad. When one becomes too pro-corporation and business, inevitably one becomes less mindful of the masses, especially those in the middle or lower income class. Many other governments in the West also have to make such a balancing act. However, in these countries, there are alternative forces that check the government and prevent them from becoming too allied to the business people. For example, in the United States, the Democrats have traditionally played the role of been more representative of the working class while the Republicans represent the big corporations and the upper classes. Unfortunately, here in Singapore we have nothing of that kind of political diversity. But at least, there is the benefit of certainty. If you are an investor in equities, shares of SMRT Corp is a must buy for your portfolio. You can be sure that like the wheat farmers, steel producers and makers of figher planes and advanced weaponry in the United States, there is no way our transport companies would be losing money or even see a substantive drop in profits. For those of us who are too poor to afford our own cars yet have the means to own shares, this might well be our only way to get all the money that the transport companies squeezed out of us.