Location, location, location. Everybody knows it. In Manila? Elevation, elevation, elevation. The truly rich guy is the bastard across the street whose driveway is eight inches higher. That guy is an oligarch.
“But, sir, technically, the flooded road is outside the property.”
Outside the property? That’s how I get to the property. Try selling a fancy restaurant and say, “The food is fantastic. Unfortunately, there’s no door.”
Unless the penthouse comes with a helicopter. Then we’re talking.
Everybody in Metro Manila has already solved the flood. Except the people whose job it is to solve the flood.
Raised sidewalks, entrances. Elevated parking. Condos have pumps; the mall, barriers. The poor raise their stuff because they can’t afford to raise the floor. The commuter buys boots. Rich folks buy 4x4s.
You live in Metro Manila long enough that even the way you look at cars changes. You see a sedan, nice car. Then it rains.
Now you’re looking at height. Tires. Ground clearance. Then you see the guy with the Ram and snorkel. A snorkel. In the city.
You used to look at the guy and say, what a lunatic. Where is he going? Africa? No. He’s going to Landers. His office is in Ortigas.
People have started buying around the flood. Building around the flood. Driving around it. Living around it.
And, because people adapt, government gets away with it. You lose P800 because you can’t get to work. The restaurant throws away food. A business loses a day. A delivery rider takes an P80,000 motorcycle into floodwater to deliver an order worth P39.
Thirty-nine pesos.
Who priced the motorcycle into the delivery? His factory just went underwater. Maybe P39 looked cheap because you weren’t charged for the full risk of getting it to you?
We push the cost to the gutter until it touches somebody too small to push it any farther. Nobody calls it a tax. I will. The flood tax. Congress never passed it. BIR doesn’t collect it. No receipt. But, every time it rains, you pay.
Unlike a normal tax (which is at least supposed to build something useful), flood tax often pays to repair the thing you already paid to build.
It’s like buying an umbrella then getting charged because you still got wet. Maybe that’s the real flood scandal. And it’s only one version of the problem.
Open a business in the Philippines and everybody tells you “You need a generator.” Really? I thought I needed customers.
And nobody says this apologetically. “Generator?” Yessir. Like you’re an idiot for expecting electricity from the electric company.
Then you need backup internet. Backup supplier. Backup route. Backup vehicle. Eventually you need a backup Philippines.
We hear the same pitch about the Philippines. Easy place to do business. English-speaking workers. Young workforce. Cheap labor. Very attractive.
But cheap labor isn’t cheap if you can’t reliably get the labor to your factory.
You show investors Philippine wages against Singapore’s. Great. Now show them Monday morning when 18 percent of the shift is stranded because the Magallanes tunnel disappeared.
You don’t care that Filipinos are resilient. As an investor, that word might scare you. Why does everybody need to be so effing resilient? You want employees who arrive boringly, work boringly, go home boringly.
Resilience is what you need when reliability has failed.
