Why I Stayed : Relevancy of The English Speaking Middle Class

Below is my email to the The Malaysian Insider:


I am your typical blue collar worker who commutes daily to work at our neighbouring country. I had been reading with some interest the ‘Why I left’ and ‘Why I stayed’ sections at The Malaysian Insider. In the ‘Why I Left’ section are the usual ‘Malaysia doesn’t love me’, ‘for the children’s sake’, ‘Malaysia not what it used to be’, ‘I love Malaysia very much but she cannot be save’ and so on. In the ‘Why I stayed’ camp are those ‘please look deeper there is beauty/virtue underneath all the crap’ and ‘Patriot who chooses to save Malaysia despite having a chance to leave’.

Interestingly both camps do articulate well the reasons they stayed or left. But there is one big problem, most of them are educated English speaking middle class and the minorities who has the privilege to choose.

What about the rest of the country? What about the big of majority Malaysians who speaks broken English(or can’t speak at all) and do not have the skills(other than manual labour) that developed countries desire?

Okay, I am a sour grape. All I can probably achieve is a subsistence wage blue collar worker in Malaysia or as a lower middle class blue collar worker in developed countries. Not much fancy social mobility there. So to me and the rest of Malaysia, the stuff expressed in both sections sounds more like bickering of the privileged few than anything sound for nation building.

Yes, everyone is entitled to their choices and opinions. And yes, the prosperity of a nation is tied the prosperity of the middle class and the extent of skill professionals are allowed to contribute(meritocracy). To make matter worse we have a corrupt government that tries to slaughter the middle class and productive entrepreneurs for short term profits.

Instead of lamenting how they are being treated by the ruling elites, how about focusing on the relevancy of the educated middle class. Are they relevant to the society they live in? To paraphrase Chris Hedges “Nicolas Sarkozy is a creep, but he is scared stiff by French worker unions and students organizations”.

Lets face it, most politicians are corrupt or will become corrupt by power. So the balance of the societies can only be achieved through educated middle class leading an intelligent/organized rebellion for the betterment of society.

The respect for rule of law, human rights, democracy, meritocracy and egalitarianism of developed countries was the product of great sacrifices by the simple folks and the educated middle class. It was not without sweat, tears and blood.

But how to organized rebellion against Malaysian ruling elites without kena ISAed? No way mah!. So just keep quiet and enjoy our transient GDP growth. And later when Malaysia is loaded with so much public and private debt, just cabut lari before it is too late loh!

Of course, I am not advocating for the middle class folks to get tear gassed at every demos. But there were many little things that they could have done.

For example, for as long as I knew JB factory operators have been working 12hours/day and 6-7days/week. They earn RM34-38 per 12 hour shift and mind you no overtime rate for Saturdays. That works out to be about RM2.60/hour. Operators are force to work like robots with speed and precision, leaving many of them struggling with body aches on a daily basis.

So did the educated/talented middle help to organize a solid grassroots movement for better working conditions? Or were the engineers and middle management too busy pleasing the corporate structure? Or were they busy figuring out what to spend on or invest with their profit pegged bonuses? Was there anyone who did not look the other way (other than the socialist bugs, of course)?

It does not take an awful lot of foolish socialistic imaginations to predict that such a class structure (apologies for sounding Marxist) will have huge negative impacts on the society. How are the workers at the bottom going to find time for their family? Burdened with physical plus mental exhaustion from work, can they provide the care and guidance that their children need? Will it then lead to dysfunctional families and domestic violence?

You mean if the middle class had done something to help the lowly educated poor, Malaysia would not be in such deep shit (pardon my language). Woit really meh? We educated middle class run businesses not welfare. That is the government job.

So we left it to the government because we pay our taxes okay! While the bosses gets their profit and middle class get their comfy pay package. These monies were later used to bid up privatize monopolies in BSKL and as collateral for loaning more money into existence to fund land speculation. The recipe for turbo charge financial wealth generation and GDP growth was set in motion. Good solution right. If that was the case Malaysia should be a smashingly great place to continue living in.

But something went wrong. The poor folks became poorer as a result of inflation eating up their meager wage. Even with both parents working, poor families still could not cope and even more destruction of the family unit awaits. The youths are lost, disgruntled and felt short changed by society. They of course did not want to end up as slave-like labour like their parents. And so the middle class blamed the unreliable ill-disciplined workers for going MIA on work. Luckily we found the solution for the businesses, 'Foreign Workers' from all over the world !!!

The ruling elites was not going to let this opportunity go to waste. They bombarded the low income groups with racist propaganda, hedonistic TV programs and lusty magazines/tabloids. And did any of our English speaking philosophical middle class stood out against such Orwellian and Huxley techniques? Or organized any grassroots movement to enlightened the lowers class?

The low income Malays were confronted with the marginalization by capitalism and artificial incitement by the ruling elites. They had nowhere else to turn to but UMNO. The fortunate ones was bribed with comfortable government jobs at the same pay as a torturous factory operators/technician. The unfortunate ones became Mat Rempits. Many low income Indians and Chinese youths turn to gangsterism and criminal syndicates affiliated with top people in the government. The Sabahans, Sarawakians and Orang Asals were even more ill prepared to face the similar challenges and were absolutely screwed.

And that is to the best of my knowledge how the ruling elites managed to monopolize the formal power(governmental) and informal power(crime gangs) which enable them to steamrolled over any piece of law, any person and any organization.

Back to the stay or leave discussion. I certainly have no problems with Malaysian leaving for greener pasture or not. But I certainly do have a problem with some myopic views on the Malaysian problem.

Firstly both camps seem to think that those developed countries are great because they have niche stuff like rule of law, good business environment and high academic standards. And Malaysia is a rotten place because we have substandard version these stuff. I would like to argue rule of law and other niche stuff are merely symptoms and not the cause of the developed nations prosperity.

The cause for prosperity lies in the solidarity of people will and the resources needed to achieve it. And what most of our English speaking middle class missed was the resources needed achieve prosperity. The poor nations needs to be corrupt and rotten for developed countries to exploit it. They need from the poor countries - natural resources, slave like labor and the cream of their crop to help them manage it. Well I guess, helping developed countries indirectly to exploit other nation seems to be a better choice. It sure beats being at the wrong end of the stick.

A few examples:
1)Warren Buffet’s Wachovia Bank needed to laundered Mexican drug cartel money to stay afloat.
2) An ounce of gold is worth USD1500. The cash cost for extracting an ounce gold is about USD500 to USD600. Out of the cash cost only less than USD300 are used to pay the workers in Africa and to grow their economy. The rest of the cash cost are probably bribe money that resides in London. An African country only gets 20% of the gold value and cyanide waste for the work to get the gold out of the gorund.
3)US had to invade Iraq for oil.
4)Germany and Britain were the top exporter of arms to Libya
5)Taib Mahmud monetize his exploits in Malaysia and invested it in prime real estates(Australia, UK, Canada and US)
6)To make profit and maintain good standard of living in Australia, Lynas have to pollute Kuantan.
7)The high standard of living that the French enjoyed is powered by nuclear energy. They are powered by uranium to Namibia. (Uranium more nasty than Lynas’s Thorium)
8)IMF and US corporations profits from the devastation of South American economies.
9)More than 90% of rare earth used in electric cars, wind turbine, IPhones and high tech applications are mined at great environmental cost from China.
10)More than 20 ex government leaders wanted for genocide resides and stash their loots in London

Secondly both camps keep on repeating that the problem lies with the ruling elites who are the mastermind of all the bad stuff plaguing Malaysia. But is it worth debating whether there are actually mean and evil people in Malaysia. Should we be questioning how they actually got away with their evil deeds instead? They can get away with it because they have control over the large majority of people at the bottom.

The middle class and those with talents were too preoccupied with getting their fair share for the efforts they put in. But that is only the meritocracy between the middle and top hierarchy. Did they forgot a simpler form of meritocracy between the middle and the bottom of hierarchy? The type of meritocracy that doesn’t involve billions worth of scholarships and projects. The type of meritocracy that accord basic dignity to the normal folks(with no exceptional talents) for their simple daily chores of keeping factories, businesses and our country running. The type of meritocracy that requires only a small amount of fair wage and some spare time for the family.

Stagnating wages and rising cost of livings had been crushing the low income group for more than a decade. The middle class is finally feeling the same weight on their shoulders. So suddenly we have a whole lot of them becoming civil activists, openly criticizing the government and marching for change. Better late than never I guess. At least the discussion of minimum wage is going mainstream nowadays.

In my bias opinion again, such reactionary stance totally wipes out their moral and intellectual high ground that they know better than the rest of society. They disconnected with the lower class. A void was created and the ruling elites came in and filled it with hate, jealousy and some other garbage as well. The ruling elites totally exploited the lower class and turned them against the middle class. And the middle class didn’t see it coming.

The fate of this country depends on the middle class ablility to connect with those lower in the hierarchy and not complaining to the ruling elites above.

PS:A quote from someone else "The measure of a civilization is how it treats its weakest members."