Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, Thailand isn't Singapore. I bet you weren't aware of that. Yeah, guess what, they are two different countries. I have been hearing this for years; it has really, really rankled me. I remember years back, this was probably 2014 maybe 2015, I remember just hearing this; it was on TV; it was it was in English as I recall and they were interviewing I think at the time somebody who was one of the Deputy Governors of Bangkok and they were talking about their plans for Bangkok. At one point it was said "well we're benchmarking Singapore. We're using Singapore's as a benchmark." And I remember thinking to myself "well get another bench" because I don't want be Singapore; I don't think Thais want to be Singaporeans; I don't think Thailand wants to be Singapore, nor should she be Singapore. Singapore is fine by the way. It's great, I'm not anti-Singapore. It's like I'm not anti any other country. I'm not necessarily anti-Switzerland notwithstanding the fact that the Davos crowd wants to come over here to Thailand and tell everybody that they need to have digital money and own nothing and be happy. If that's what you want to do back in Davos, go back to Davos. If social credit scores work for China, great, do that in China, but we don't need it here. So again, nothing wrong with Singapore, and Singapore isn't in my opinion thrusting itself in, but for whatever reason, certain aspects of the bureaucracy here in Thailand have got it into their head that Thailand - or specifically Bangkok - should be like Singapore. I have got to tell you, I moved to Bangkok because I love Bangkok. I didn't move to Bangkok because it reminded me of Singapore. Now in the interest of full disclosure, I've never been to Singapore; I haven't been to Singapore because I don't particularly want to go to a giant nation state that's a mall or a Disney World type of thing and it's cool, it's great, it's a single party system down there. It's all neato, I'm real happy for them. They've had a lot of success over the years and it's great for them, but that's just not my style. The reason honestly that I came to Thailand, one of the big reasons, I have always viewed Bangkok as like the New Orleans of Asia. I remember driving into New Orleans years and years ago right after 9/11 because my family got sort of stranded there because they had flown down there and I had to drive all the way down there from Kansas, so like drive halfway across the Louisiana Purchase Territory to get down to New Orleans and I drove in and I watched the sunrise over the Pontchartrain as I'm driving into New Orleans; it was just beautiful. I fell in love with the city. I had the same feelings about Bangkok. When I was driving in, the sun was actually coming up, it was in the morning I was driving into Bangkok for the first time and it just reminded me of the same thing and quite honestly over the years the analogy between Thailand and Louisiana in the United States, I don't think it's not an apples to apples complete comparison, but there are a lot of similarities. The Chao Phraya and the Mississippi - although the Chao Phraya is not quite as long as Mississippi - but again it has the same sort of feel in this town and again these are the things I love about Thailand: it's uniqueness, it's not it's Singaporeness that has ever particularly attracted me at least, to Thailand and I don't think other people for that matter. 

That said, I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Bangkok Post, that is bangkokpost.com, the article is titled: Over 200 foreign nationals nabbed, Labour Ministry says. Now the thrust of that article goes in a different direction. It's talking about a lot of stuff having to do with foreigners being arrested here in Thailand in association with working illegally. So I urge those who are watching this video, go check out that article in detail if you want to get sort of another nuance to that article. But what we're talking about here, I'm going to get into right now. Quoting directly: "Bangkok Governor, Chadchart Sittipunt, said City Hall," first of all let's go back here. I made a video previously where we were talking about the fact that for whatever reason the Government - at least the City Government - in their infinite wisdom when they were sitting down and thinking of problems and then trying to come up with solutions, decided that their big solution was to go after all of the street vendors and basically tax them and extract wealth from them and basically try to put them into this sort of what I can only describe as sort of a totalitarian financial surveillance grid, is basically what I look at it as, and we discussed that in prior videos. I brought up the movie recently that came out, the Beekeeper, because it just reminded me of that movie when I first heard that. I was like wait, what? Your plan is to go around to the working poor and bother those people. I mean isn't there something better we could be doing with our time? That being said, quoting directly: "Bangkok Governor, Chadchart Sittipunt, said City Hall is pursuing an initiative to return footpaths to pedestrians and relocate street vendors to designated areas. Quote: "The heart of the street vendor issue is the use of public areas to make a living." Quote: "It has been a long-standing problem that has become a way of life for some people but creates conflict with pedestrians." Okay, that is a fair enough point on the footpath thing. I have discussed this in the past, there is a balance there, but again I think especially these bureaucrats and these people that are working in these Governments, they get sort of blinders on when they decide there's a problem and they don't look at the broader issue. A lot of folks I think forget that part of what's endearing to tourists - and this should not be the only thing that the Administration of Bangkok should care about is what foreigners think - but again what's very endearing about Bangkok to many, especially tourists, is the street food and the lively street economy. I know that these folks that only want to live in a banker's world are obsessed with GDP and getting the “gray economy” under control, using all kinds of silly euphemisms for what is essentially just free enterprise, that is what it is at the end of the day. But again there is a balance there and I do get that walking paths, footpaths, pedestrian thoroughfares need to be maintained, but at what cost? To my mind it's part of the soul of Bangkok to have street vendors and again they shouldn't completely overrun the thoroughfares where you can't walk down them, but one) to completely cast them aside is to forget that it's that real economy that has repeatedly saved Thailand when the so-called "financial economy" run in the global context has broken down. That's what saved everything in '97 if you read what actually went down; that's what saved things when the Baht started to strengthen out back in '11. I think it is what will save things again here in Thailand. That said, I don't know why but these kind of Nanny Minder bureaucrat type folks don't really want to look at that side of the coin. 

That being said, quoting further: "Our main goal is that in the future, street vendors will decrease and should not occupy public spaces". Well why? They have been there. That is a balance that can be maintained. Why? Quoting further: "We'll allocate spaces for them so that sellers don't have to worry about their stalls blocking walkways." Okay, well, that would be nice. That being said, initially the big push was to get them all into tax stuff, financial surveillance grid and tell them that only poor people can do the job and starting to really just mess with people's livelihoods. I'm going to take a wait and see attitude when it comes to the notion that they are not going to mess with the street vendors too much. Quoting further: "This will make them feel safer and allow them to live better." Well okay. Will they own nothing and be happy too? Quoting further: "City Hall plans to adopt the model of Hawker Centres in Singapore." Well neato! Neato! Why? Why do we need to adopt that? Because Singapore does it? And by the way, why does Singapore get this reputation from all the foreigners being this greatest place and meanwhile Thailand takes - it's not a year that goes by I don't hear some smug condescending foreigner tell me something about “Thailand's democracy” which by the way Thailand isn't a democracy, it's a Constitutional Monarchy. Meanwhile, I don't ever hear a peep about the fact that Singapore is a Uni-Party state. Nobody ever brings that up. But meanwhile we're all supposed to look at Singapore as some kind of model. Why? Because it's more Western like? Because of its heavy British influence? Which that's neither here nor there. It is neither a bad thing nor a good thing. It's just Thailand is what she is, Singapore is what she is. Why this push for uniformity across the world? The differences between nation states are what makes them cool, it's not that we're all uniform. What are we? The Board from Star Trek the Next Generation? I mean come on! Quoting further: "New regulations on street vendors will be introduced next year allowing vendors to operate in these designated areas, he said". Designated areas. So you mean the places where these folks have built up their business, have built up their customer base where people know where they're at to find them to buy things? No, no. We're going to put you somewhere because as Ronald Reagan famously said, "we're from the government, and we're here to help." Quoting further: "Over the past two years City Hall has prepared some areas for street vendors and relocated some of them." Okay, again I think that this is a dangerous path Thailand, going into this "well we have designated areas where we are basically modeling after Singapore." Well Singapore looks a lot like a police state quite honestly, and I'm not talking about, it cares about law and order the way that Thailand does, no I'm talking about a full-on police state where they tell you: what's that line from the movie Scarface where he's a Cuban exile and he is talking about Communists, and he says: "what do you want to live like? You want a shivato on every corner? somebody around just telling everybody what to do, Nanny-mindering them on how they run their own business because I mean personally, I think the lack of that is what makes Thailand both great as a country and her economy highly resilient. Quoting further: "I believe this effort will help make the city more orderly, he said." 

Well there is it benefit to order, I don't discount that, but we have to balance these things. It also needs to be remembered that these are Thais and they have an inherent liberty, they have an inherent right in my mind to make their living. And again there is a balance there. Yes, the City Government needs to do something about maintaining the thoroughfare, but going into a Singaporean paradigm where we're just going to tell everybody and they can only be here, and this is how it's going to be, I find that very troubling and again I find it to be of concern for Thailand generally, both now and moving forward.