I refer to the article Devaluing the currency of sweat .

I would not want to get into an intellectual debate with this article's writer. He has far more debating capabilities than I but it does not make the expressed opinion correct for Malaysia or other democracies or pseudo-democracies. We could argue about the real definition of democracy from country to country until the cows come home.

Malaysian workers have life fairly good. I work as an expatriate in this country alongside Malaysians in a company my wife operates. She has 20 employees and I feel they are doing reasonably well economically, socially and intellectually in their positions of interesting technical work.

No one is happy all the time. But if my wife's employees and the employees of the companies her company serves are any example, Malaysians are far from being exploited by capitalist employers. What does the writer want? Sterilised Soviet socialism?

I would rather be underpaid in a job and have a chance to move ahead as far as my ambitions allow than have all the 'respect' the writer calls for via demonstrations on Labour Day. I would rather have Labour Day as a holiday with my family than to go out for a demonstration.

My taxes and consumer spending along with my abiding by local laws should be enough for the powers-that-be to provide the relatively free life any government can provide. We can never be totally free. Our parents never let us be totally free because they knew we needed rules by which to conduct ourselves in a civil society. So, no government can loosen the reins totally either.

I am not certain what the writer wants here but I recommend he read a recent book by Amy Chua entitled World on Fire . This book explains how free-market democracy breeds ethnic hatred and global instability. It is not a book against capitalism.

Rather, it illustrates how some free markets have concentrated disproportionate wealth in the hands of a resented minority. It describes how some minorities wind up with disproportionate wealth by their own hard work and finish by becoming victims of the local majority's wrath as a result of jealousy and greed.

Much of the process in those directions is usually at the behest of the sitting government in the affected country - the politicians.

That is what is wrong with labour relations - not the modified and somewhat constrained capitalist economy most democracies and pseudo-democracies have as their economic model. No labourer is paid his true worth. Never has been that way; never will be that way. Who defines 'true worth'? Company management or labour? And is it necessary to pay 'true worth'?

Take a good look around Malaysia. No one is paying 'true worth' for motor fuel, bread, chicken, housing etc. For the most part in Malaysia, the market determines labour's worth. It's not yet a controlled item.

You may or may not like the numbers that come up on your scale when you weigh in. But, the fact that one can make his or herself worth more by obtaining better skills or more education should drive labour forward to receive more value for their time at work.

Demonstrations to obtain respect and moaning about unfairness either here, in Brazil or wherever else won't earn you much.

Indeed, there is much unfairness and inequality in this world. As this will continue, I suggest a regimen of sweat towards self-improvement in order to insure the level of respect labour seeks.

There is always respect for hard and honest work no matter what the slick TV and magazine ads show or say, no matter what the news media shows of slick politicians postulating their positions on labour.