u/polyglot02

I find it strange that many modern progressives support policies that increase labour competition while claiming to support workers.

If you dramatically increase the supply of labour, wages and bargaining power are weakened. That is not “far right”. It is basic economics. Employers benefit from a larger labour pool because workers become easier to replace, while landlords benefit from increased housing demand.

Historically, labour movements often opposed large-scale immigration for exactly this reason. That was not because workers hated immigrants, but because employers could use immigration to suppress wages and weaken unions.

What is interesting is how effectively modern capitalism reframes the discussion. Instead of allowing immigration to be debated in terms of labour markets, wages, housing and class interests, the conversation gets redirected into culture war rhetoric and moral signalling. Workers arguing about economic pressures are portrayed as ignorant or hateful, while corporations benefiting from cheap labour and endless population growth avoid scrutiny entirely.

I do not think immigration should exist primarily to provide corporations with endless cheap labour or permanently inflate GDP figures. Personally, I think migration should mainly be limited to genuine humanitarian cases and to maintaining population stability in countries where fertility rates fall below replacement level.

That being said, I will never ever ever vote for a right wing party that claims to be tough on immigration because it's just fundamentally against everything they stand for. They will only ever pay lip service to it because their only goal is empowering their own billionaire class.

I travelled to a couple of countries recently including China and Vietnam and after experiencing those places I feel that the customer service culture here is not very refined. As in, business owners don't really put much thought into providing excellent service. So in hospitality you have workers who are clearly mentally checked out when serving you, follow rigid arbitrary guidelines that wastes the customer's time to no benefit for the business, not making accommodations for the feelings of the customer, etc. Anyway, I'm definitely not saying that Malaysians aren't friendly people. Just that customer service culture seems a bit primitive in this aspect.

I booked a ticket on the busonlineticket website from hentian duta in KL to hat yai today departing at 8:30am. I had booked on this website before and didn't have any problems. When I arrived at the terminal the ticketing lady told me that the bus was cancelled and offered me no explanation and just told me to buy another ticket at the terminal directly. Is this normal for intercity buses in Malaysia? When I checked my booking it just said confirmed. No cancellation or refund notification or anything. 75x2 ringgit down the toilet.

I was thinking of planning a small detour here for my M'sia trip. I heard somewhere that it was a trap only good for the casino. I don't mind casinos anyway but I was just wondering if I would regret it or not.

I'm in KL now. So far I've been to KL, Penang, Malacca, and Ipoh. Thinking of stopping somewhere on the way to Bangkok which I will reach via sleeper train.

Like I wish people would stop giving money to companies that slap a made in Italy or so on label on to their clothing and a certain demographic of consumers laps it up out of a bizarre belief that those clothes are somehow of a better quality.

For one, these companies often have the bulk of the work done in China or India or Vietnam or Bangladesh, etc. and then attach one component in a Western/European country and then it's technically made in said country. That's without even talking about how this belief that clothing made in Western/European countries is better underlies fundamentally a very myopic and even racist attitude towards the skill and ability of people who live in those Asian countries.

Of course, when I talk about this I'm not talking about people who buy their own country's clothing for reasons such as wanting to promote their own country's industries.

Like the fact of the matter is that the high cost of labour in developed nations has moved all of labour intensive industries such as clothing manufacturing to developing countries. The vast majority of the most skilled makers of clothing now reside in those countries. Clothing made in developing countries shouldn't be associated with poor quality goods because while the poor quality stuff is made there so is the high quality stuff and clothing is only expensive when made in developed countries because of an inefficient use of capital.

I recently bought twenty OCBDs when I was in China directly from a factory and I was very impressed with them. They had a great collar roll, carefully stitched, great attention to detail, 100 percent cotton for about 10 bucks each.

Every time I hear someone talk about their clothes bragging about made in such and such I want to roll my eyes. Of course I'm not talking about second-hand clothing when I mention this.

Travelling to Malaysia again but don't want to spend too much this time. Was thinking I'd stay a bit out of the city centre in like Puchong or something. Is there a place with a lot of Chinese/Malay/Indian hawkers all in one place for a good price?