Chapter 46

Cedar was a privately owned transport company. A few years earlier, through the bidding process, it had secured Sabine City’s public transit operating rights for four years, with another four years attached.

Why four years plus four years? The explanation given to the public was that if Cedar Company failed to perform well in the first four years, the contract for the second four would not be renewed.

But in reality, that contract was tied to the term of the Federation’s President. Every presidential inauguration, every reelection, was never just about the President alone. It concerned the operation of the entire upper structure of the Federation government.

The ministers chosen by the President would in turn choose the deputies they wanted. It was a process both complicated and simple. Stripped bare, it was nothing more than taking sides.

Perhaps at first many people had not realized that becoming President could bring more than power. But now they knew. It also brought wealth.

Every President, every span of eight years, generated an economic ecosystem built around presidential authority, but the public never knew it.

These conglomerates, born in the President’s name or family name, were usually hidden inside other conglomerates. Take the previous His Excellency President Jotson. Out of sight of the public, there existed such a thing as the Jotson Group.

Outside that group stood yet another conglomerate to conceal it, so most people never saw the name “Jotson” directly. What they saw was merely some subsidiary under some larger consortium. The people at the bottom would never touch the truth.

Cedar was one of those companies that had benefited from a similar arrangement. Cedar’s owner had some connection to a certain aide in the President’s faction, not especially close, yet not distant either. Not close enough to call it friendship, certainly, but close enough to exchange a few words.

So he had taken Sabine City’s public transit operating rights with almost laughable ease, while in less visible places he fed resources upward to demonstrate his loyalty.

No one should look down on public transportation. It was a large business. Sabine City’s total population was only seven hundred sixty thousand, yet roughly two hundred thousand passenger trips a day were made by public transport within the city.

Assume all of them were short-distance movements, five kilometers or less. Even at a fare of only twenty-five cents, ticket sales alone would bring in over fifty thousand dollars a day. In a month, that meant over a million dollars in revenue.

At this point, Cedar’s owner might still try to mutter something about operating costs, fuel, wages, wear and tear, even the early investment.