Problem with tickmark/ticklabel locator

When I create a plot that is smaller than the figure window, the
tickmark locator seems to locate the ticks based on the figure size,
not the subplot size. I tried this several ways.

figure(figsize=(3,3))
plot([1000,2000,3000],[1,2,3])
subplots_adjust(right=0.5)

This messes up the ticklabels, especially on the x-axis. It should
resample and only plot a couple of ticks, but I don’t know the command
to update the ticks. The same happens when I resize with the tool on
the toolbar. Almost the same happens when I use the axes command from
the get go:

figure(figsize=(3,3))
axes( [.1,.1,.4,.8] )
plot([1000,2000,3000],[1,2,3])

This give fine looking y labels, but the x-axis is still messed up.
Does it maybe always plot 4 ticks on each axis by default? Should it
maybe check if there is space for that?

Any suggestions are appreciated,

Thanks,

Mark