The Gangsters of Malaysia

Malaysian's mass media likes to associate crime with foreign immigrants. Just take a look at TV3 for instance, raid by police will always shows police capturing illegal foreignors. Eventhough they have the tendency to do violence, studies have shown that the foreign immigrants only contributes to 2% of the total index crime in Malaysia. What they should focus more is the increasing level of gangsterism in Malaysia. Below is a graph I found on the statistics of registered gang members in Malaysia in 2004. Made me think, how did they register? with whom? ministry of gangsterism? :)

Source: The Rise of Crime in Malaysia, ACP Amar Singh Sidhu, 2004

I have been educated in a Malaysian public school, and I have to admit, gangsterism is a norm. Fightings outside or inside the school is like a normal occurence. Just you are walking by to buy that delicious cendol (and play some tikam) outside the school gate, suddenly bangg.. a student get walloped by a helmet by another student. Schools of course under reported this as to keep the squeeky clean image of the school. When fights happen, teachers will usually turn away and act as nothing is happening. When fight happens, students will gather around to see it like a wrestling match in television. Honestly, it's exciting to see a hooligan bashing up another student mercilessly without any apparent reason, unless it is you who is being beaten up. Chinese, Indians and Malays each form its own gang. Never I have seen a multiracial gang. From my personal observation, the Indian and Malay gang usually fight bcoz of a girl. Wahh..so romantic la these fella. The Chinese gang is much more organised and is usually linked with triads outside the school.

Ok, on a serious note, what cause students to get involved in a gang? Disfunctional family? poor family? Single parent family? On a book entitled Freakonomics, Stephen Levitt has a theory on this. He says that whether a child is going bad or not is not correlated with good or bad parenting. It's largely due to who are your child's friends. You can give the best parenting possible, but if he get mixed with a bad crowd, he would likely fall into the dark side. Man.. Just look at Star Wars, Anakin become Darth Vedder bcoz of bad peer pressure by the Sith Lord. Haha.. Even the wise Yoda could not save him. Freaky isnt' it?

The downfall of Malaysian music industry

As any other industry, there will always be a U-shaped trend, upwards and downwards. Honestly speaking, the Malaysian music industry was comfortably in the upward zone and suddenly before you know it, it is rock bottom. All you can hear now in the radio is foreign (more precisely Indonesian) song. It you have read Malcolm Gladwell's book entitled "The Tipping Point", he explains very precisely about the U-shaped trend. He explains that at a point of time, the trends of particular events or industry can shifted drastically. This point of time is called the tipping point. So, what's that got to do with the Malaysian music industry? Well, if we applied Malcolm's theory, the fall of the Malaysian music industry must starts at a tipping point. So, when exactly is that tipping point? Maybe its hard to believe this but from my personal view, the tipping point is at the start of the first debut of hit music reality tv.

Ok, let's look at facts first shall we? Akademi Fantasia first hits the airwave in 2003. In that same time also saw the emergence of Sheila on 7, the first Indonesian band that really make an impact to the Malaysian music industry. These followed by Peterpan, Dewa and so on. Interesting coincidence isn't it? Not convinced? Ok, let's look at a more serious note, the economics theory. Wahh,, fun stuff :).

Reality tv's singing competition in a positive note, has given a breath of fresh air for the Malaysian music industry. It has provide a platform to discover hidden talent among Malaysians. All of a sudden, Malaysia have a surplus of artists that Malaysian's can idolise. Mind you, one batch of Akademi Fantasia is 12 -14 students. These students who either eliminated or graduated from the akademi will and has established a fan base. This causes surplus of artist exceeding tha actual demand of the market. But, in the sametime, the Malaysian's songwriter and composer remains the same. So, what happens is the mismatch of supply and demand of artists created and songwriters available.

In economic terms, if the price of a substitute good changes, the economic value for the good in question will change in the same direction. For example, wheat bread is a close substitute for multi-grain bread. So, if the price of multi-grain bread goes up, while the price of wheat bread remains the same, some people will switch, or substitute, from multi-grain to wheat bread. Therefore, more wheat bread is demanded and its demand function shifts upward, making the area under it, the consumer surplus, greater.

Therefore, to conclude, we have now way too many artist in Malaysia but with the same amount of songwriters. This caused the market to shift and therefore creates high demand for Indonesian musics. Freaky isn't it?