便宜一点吧！

I'm currently in the midst of planning a trip to Peru with my brother in June and yesterday I just got confirmation of my payment to the trekking company that will take us up to Macchu Picchu. The payment method was really dodgey coz they wanted me to send a deposit of $300 via Western Union to the supposed owner of the business. Apparently that's how things work over there, but as the Western Union form screamed "Help prevent consumer fraud!", I was understandably unnerved. So now as far as I know, they have received the payment and I'm all set to go. Of course, they could say that they have no such record when I get there, but that's another issue.

I don't like being cheated. In some ways it's worse than getting robbed (though I don't like that either). The thing about being cheated is that you often enter into it willingly. You think you've got a good deal, then it appears that you're paying 5 times the actual price. This is why I don't like economies that thrive on bargaining. From an economic standpoint, even if you paid more than what the good was actually worth, that you were willing to pay that price should justify the transaction (i.e. the value of a good = how much someone is willing to pay for it). But this makes it really frustrating for people who can't bear the thought of having paid more than someone else for exactly the same thing. I think local Beijing/Shanghai people would excel at games like The Price is Right, since you really need to know how much things are actually worth each time you go shopping. Here's an example of how bargaining could be done. I guess it's fun if you really do get a sweet deal (like my mega cheap Columbia jackets bargained down from US$100 to S$40), but as a way of life, it's way too exhausting.

An interesting thought: in such a bargaining society, it would probably be true that networks become all the more important. If you want to buy a printer for example, you would ask your friends where's the best place to buy it. So a store that provides good service and instills customer loyalty will no doubt do very much better in the long run due to the problem of incomplete information on the consumers' side which makes them trust in their networks alot more.