Yin Shao Loong's piece on Devaluing the currency of sweat empathises with workers 'at the bottom of the value chain'. Well-written drivel in general, but with searing shafts of occasional truth.

A giddy combination which one must exorcise by a shot of cheap rum and Coke while listening again to the first movement of Beethoven's Opus 131.

It is a provocative and rarely expressed (in this blessed country) viewpoint which makes one struggle to comprehend the essential disparities in the life of the human ant.

Yes, ants. There are many parallels of life in ant heaps with human society.

Millions of human worker ants labour daily, leading lives of quiet desperation. Over-achiever T Ananda Krishnan ants strive to build giant KLCC anthills into which thousands of commuter-mite ants pile in daily, grinding through the paperwork, leaving shredded paper in their wake as termites are wont to do.

Then there are multitudes of queens, usually politicians who, like termite queens, must receive special food and try their best to replicate society in their image. Mat Bulog seems to be one of them.

How else can you explain that after almost 50 years after Independence, we still have scores of these so-called 'expatriates' capable of justifying why they must be retained at scandalous salaries and perks, 'hardship pay' to live at Kenny Hills and Bangsar and endure the society of those bloomin' wogs, hmm?

If Malaysian workers have life fairly good, as Mat avers, then he, as an expatriate, must be doing better - much, much better. Who determined the premium paid for his expatriate status? Are those like him, ever paid their true worth, whatever that is?

From the synopsis of Amy Chua's book, World on Fire, Ms Chua suggests that it was not democracy, per se, nor its combination with free-market economies, that proved volatile. She suggests that a more measured, graduated movement towards democratic practices might have been wiser.

Again, the control of 70 percent of Indonesia's economy by the two percent Chinese during Suharto's tenure was surely not guided by the invisible hand of free markets. More likely, it was the invisible hand of the virtual dictator and his corrupt cronies.

Mat says that no one is paying 'true worth' for chicken in Malaysia. Oh, I don't know. It's true that kampung chicken costs, let us say, RM8 per kilo while factory-bred chicken costs, say RM3 per kilo. But then, to get the total picture, you could add-in the cost of healthcare for future disease caused by eating said foodstuff.

For kampung chicken, this could be small, say 50 sen per kilo. But factory-bred chicken would clearly carry a heavier health risk premium, perhaps even another RM3 per kilo thanks to the generous helpings of steroids to fatten them up quicker for market.

Total cost would then be RM8.50 vs RM6. But for the lower total cost of consuming factory-bred chicken, you have a perhaps 400 percent higher probability of getting cancer and dying. Is it worth it? You take your pick.

I do have one bone to pick with Yin. I see the capitalist also as an entrepreneur. He/she brings in the original intellectual seed-capital, the initial spark of a bankable business idea/model. He/she also risks his initial capital and that of his business partners.

There is every chance of failure and much hard work, to germinate and then grow a business. This is the prime source of his profit justification. I do not see him/her as being in a 'parasitic, vampire-like' relation to the producers of value, the worker-employees.

But I agree that there could be better balance between the worker and capitalistic class in terms of legislation enforcing antitrust practices and more transparency in public sector project tendering among others. These will come through the WTO eventually. One lives in hope.