Twice a week on RANDTS.. I have to say that is an uphill task for me but I will try... haha... Today my topic is Malaysian passive behavior. An interesting pattern I am becoming to notice from media sources like this one is that somehow our education system seems to be lacking the ability to create bold and competitive individuals.

As an economics major, I do have a certain leaning towards capitalism. I am still more of a skeptic than one would assume of an economics student, but I do not deny many of the strengths of the system, a major one being competitive markets. We all know competitive markets drive the price down, in general its a good thing, because competition breeds quality. The idea can be extended elsewhere, and everywhere. Competition is great. Look at the AirAsia-Malaysia Airlines rivalry and how it has driven prices down. Malaysia airlines can no longer slack off and hire people unnecessarily. Consumers are getting prices that almost equal the cost of production.

However, look elsewhere and we see that there isn't competition in plent of other markets in Malaysia, and even if there is, it isn't Malaysian driven competition. For example, the hypermarket market is dominated by Tesco, which is British, Jusco, which is Japanese, and Carrefour, which is French. The sole local successful representative is Giant. Others like Mydin and The Store are being swollen up by the intense competition. As for construction companies in Malaysia, almost all the big projects are carried out by UEM. Astro dominates the cable tv market and TMnet has a monopoly of high speed internet services, though that is a diminishing monopoly. The point being made is that Malaysians are not competitive enough. Even in politics, we all know who has the monopoly. The reason for their monopoly is not necessarily that they are the best government in the world and everyone is happy with the administration. The problem is there is no competition. Our political arena is not attracting the best of bests. and because of that, the government at times has the opportunity to short change the public. Even I am not imply that we quit voting for the weighing scale. All I am implying is we need a stronger opposition front, which can challenge, question and keep the government on its toes so that the people in power know they are not irreplaceable and maintain a sense of quality and integrity in delivery. There needs to be greater efforts to battle monopolies, a good governmnet would encourage competition; even competition with itself.

Refer to the article about the Commonwealth and you will see that no one, despite the qualifications is interested in a leading position in the Commonwealth. It shows that our Malaysian population is passive.

Are we producing competitive Malaysians. Are our young ones trained to compete, to challenge the status quo, to dream a better tomorrow? Or are we conditioning them to be good employees which regurgitate facts well?