thinking too much again?

I know we charge motorists for using roads in s'pore. But I only just realised that, in some areas, we charge pedestrians and users of public transport for their mode of transport as well. The only difference is that the revenues don't go to the coffers of LTA (or whichever agency is in charge of ERP); they accrue to whichever organization is holding its flag day instead.

I cannot recall the last saturday I managed to walk from home to jurong point without getting accosted by someone brandishing a tin can bedecked with stickers, smiling at me and asking me if I'd like to donate to a university/charity/al-Qaeda. Once I depart the safe havens of the HDB estates, I have to run a gauntlet of hardened donation collectors, positioned at strategic points along the route to jurong point, ready to ambush any unsuspecting passerby with smiles, tin cans and insistent politeness. Like the call of the Sirens, it's difficult to resist a direct and well-phrased request to part with some of your money. Having not been blessed with a thick skin, I rarely emerge from such encounters unscathed; either I exchange some cash for the sacred sticker to guarantee my safe passage, or I have to fend off repeated molestations, all the while being saddled with a feeling of lingering guilt at being such a scrooge. Talk about the devil's choices.

I don't know how many S'poreans think the way I do, but judging by the hordes of flag-plastered people wandering around boon lay on saturdays, those toll-collectors are doing pretty fine. Which is probably why some incarnation of this army turns up every week, without fail. It's a demonstration of a basic tenet of human behaviour: people want to feel good about themselves, and they will be willing to bear some cost to avoid a negative self-image.

Which brings me to DVDs. It's almost impossible to tell between real and pirated DVDs nowadays, in terms of quality and packaging (or so I've been told). So if you were someone who thinks that buying pirated DVDs is wrong, and somehow beneath you, you'd be hard-pressed to stick to your principles (insofar as not buying pirated DVDs is a principle), simply because it's so hard to identify the real stuff. One way you could do that would be to go to a reputable DVD seller, instead of hanging out at shady pasar malam stalls. Of course, you would have to pay more for a DVD at a legal vendor than at the Ah Beng-run stall. But then principles don't come cheap.     

But wait a minute. Think from the perspective of a reputable DVD seller. People come to your store looking to buy genuine DVDs, and they are generally willing to pay more for your wares, because of aforementioned principles. This gives you a very big incentive to source for fake (or at least doubtfully legal) DVDs, since these are presumably cheaper for you. And since people can hardly tell the difference between what's real and what's not, the chances of getting caught by your customers is pretty low.

Of course, the hard part is probably getting hold of the DVDs. After all, not many shady Ah Bengs are setting up DVD-counterfeiting businesses nowadays. And trying to cover it all with legal paperwork probably needs a high level of creativity. But my point is that it is theoretically possible for a DVD store to hawk (high-quality) pirated wares, and human behaviour provides an incentive for it to do so. It's just like the organizations who hold flag days at boon lay on saturdays: their business is based on an understanding of human weakness (in this case, for a positive self-image), and the ability to exploit it.