Transcript of the above video:

So the title of this video is kind of broad and the thumbnail may not make a lot of sense from the outset, but let me just jump into it. I made a video within a couple of days of this video coming out, or I put it up within a couple of days of this coming out - we put it up - talking about the nominee Crackdown, these corporations owning property and I was talking about how I was basically, there was an article that was in the Pattaya Mail basically saying that the foreigners were completely the victims in all of this. Now I made a video basically the title of it was, It takes two to tango, or the thumbnail was It Takes Two to Tango and I got a lot of blow back; I actually expected to have a lot of blowback on that video. I don't make these videos in sort of a popularity contest. At this point I kind of make these videos because I am just trying to say what my sort of point of view of calling balls and stripes basically, just trying to call it fair out here in terms of the reality of the things. 

Now I thought I got it across in the video that yes, there are circumstances where lawyers or real estate agents - mostly real estate agents so-called, because especially foreign nationals shouldn't even be involved in that. It is completely; it is doubly restricted occupation. It is agency, restricted, and it's also matters pertaining to land, land development, land exploitation, also restricted. And another thing I didn't really quite get to in the video or didn't maybe put a fine enough point on it, although I have in other videos previously, I would expect, again the blowback was sitting there like, "well all these foreigners came along and they were detrimentally relying" was basically the argument in a lot of these comments on Thai lawyers etc. Well a lot of times I am here to tell you, it was foreigners talking to other foreigners “yessing” them to death and telling them that everything was just hunky dory, and the reality of it is that yeah it might not have been, depending on the circumstances. 

Now again, the point I was trying to make was not that foreigners are entirely in the wrong, nor was my point that Thais were entirely in the wrong. The point was "It Takes Two to Tango" and the article that I was citing was leading people to believe that, "oh the foreigners were completely led up the primrose path etc." There may have been instances where that occurred on a case-by-case basis, but in a broad sense, I have a hard time believing that. Now again, I'm not saying this was wholly a bunch of foreigners’ fault. No, that's not my point. My point was that to frame it as them as just entirely the victim, was not really looking at the situation for what it was. Now reasonable people can definitely discuss the ramifications and the nuances of all of that stuff, and individual cases are a different thing. I'm talking about this as a broad phenomenon, okay? So, sort of from the outset I want to be clear on that. 

That said, one of the comments on that video went as follows: I'll go ahead and throw this on screen. "How many other countries essentially force foreigners to only live or buy condos vs. allowing them to buy a real house or villa?" I don't know, but what's the point in that question? Thailand is a sovereign country. It can tell foreign nationals and restrict foreign nationals however it wants. I mean also let's be honest, Malaysia has restrictions on foreigners owning property. Now there are exceptions. They have that Malaysia My Second Home Program over there which under certain circumstances a foreigner can buy like a sort of residential property or something like this, but overall, they have restrictions. Cambodia has restrictions. Foreign nationals can't own anything on the first floor anywhere and land I believe is restricted over there as well. My understanding, same for Vietnam; same for Laos; same for China. Not really sure about Myanmar. I expect if you have a large enough weapon stockpile, you can probably hold down whatever real estate you can hold down over there. Sorry, I am joking a little bit, all due sympathy for what's going on over in the Myanmar, but they're not exactly handing out land to foreigners. It has never been a major thing here in East Asia for foreigners to be able to own land. Even Hong Kong, which was a British colony, entirely operated on a leasing structure, even when it was a British colony. So again, what are we talking about? Again, my understanding, I don't know about Japan and Korea specifically, but I lived in Korea for not an insignificant amount of time and it was my understanding that foreign nationals couldn't necessarily own actual real property; I think there was something akin to condos there. But again, it's not a common practice in Asia for foreign nationals to be able to just own however much land they want to own. So, let's start from that premise. Quoting further: "Many of these larger properties are out of range of most Thais anyway, otherwise they would already own them." Well, that's the problem, isn't it? And that is why Thailand is restricting this stuff, because they don't want foreign money to come in, inflate up the price of the land, and thereby force out all of the locals from being able to purchase the property. That's the point. By the way, that was the entire plot of the first season of Yellowstone. Like the final episode of Yellowstone, the first season, sorry spoiler alert, the “bad” guy in that talks about things like hanging by this rope - he's on this horse and they are basically saying, "hey what was your plan?" He said, to come in here, buy a property next to your father's, run up the prices of land, up the property tax and basically force him to sell because he could no longer pay the property tax." Okay, so therein lies the reason for the thumbnail. And just some personal background on me - I brought this up in another video going back like over a year ago, about 15 ,16 months ago, a little less than that actually - about a year ago now, when I was talking about, it didn’t gain a lot of traction that video -I don't even know if that video broke 200 views - but it was when the discussions on gambling here in Thailand came up. I had serious problems with what the government was proposing at that time and I brought up the fact that look you need to be looking at the Indian reservation casinos and things, and I brought that up because I worked on a native American reservation. At one time I worked up outside of Topeka, Kansas at one of the casinos there and it was on a reservation. I also, I know I don't particularly look it, but I have Cherokee in my background. I have Cherokee blood. I even have my turkey feathers and stuff which for a grown man that's like saying I know how to walk or something, but I've been to the reservation down there. As a kid, my grandfather took me there and his background was that they kept it secret for years and years because it was like kind of a family, almost mark of shame because of the era that they grew up in, and all the history and everything associated with that. 

But here comes the point of the video and that is going back to this quote, "many of these larger properties are out of reach in most Thais anyway otherwise they would already own them." Yeah, that is why Thailand is restricting these things. They don't want their own people to be forced off of their own land. Quoting further, let me just finish off the quote: "Foreigners bring a lot of money to spend in Thailand." Now that is a good point, and I get all of that, and I'm not trying to be anti-foreigner here, but the law has been clear. And by the way, I find it very interesting that all foreign precepts, we tell all these folks out in the old sort of colonial spheres of old that they need to be looking to the West as the bastion of all of these notions of law and of philosophy and things, whatever happened to "ignorance of the law is no excuse"? Because that was everything that I was seeing in the comments was, "oh these foreigners didn't know what was going on and". Well back in the West, if the rules were reversed, and back in the West somebody was sort of lost value or something as a result of not being in line with the law that they didn't know that that was the case, the response would just be "ignorance of the law is no excuse." I find it to be a little cold, but that would be the response. And the point of this video is I don't get on this, and it's not - somebody accused me of being on a soapbox or something, whatever - if really all you have to do with your time is get on these comments and just berate me, wow, just heck of a life you lead. Have fun with that. But that said, and the point I'm trying to make is and the reason for the thumbnail, I am naturalized to Thai citizenship. One person brought it up, "oh well you can say this because you are a naturalized Thai." To a certain extent, I understand the criticism and I'll take it for what it is, fine, you got me on that, touché, but that's not why I'm making these videos. 

What scares me, what terrifies me is I know the history and I know how these things can be. That photo in the thumbnail is the Trail of Tears where foreigners literally stole the Cherokee's land, and then forced them to march halfway across the face of North America, to be placed in a place that everybody thought was scrub brush and basically left for dead in Oklahoma, only to later find out they had oil on that land. So, it's sort of a 'frown upside down' kind of thing, but only after they had been utterly decimated along the way. We are talking about a place that tried to accommodate, that wanted to interact, that was trying to do things right. The Cherokee nation was one of the so-called five civilized tribes. They had been in contact with so-called white man at that time since basically he showed up on North American soil. And what happened? Accommodation, accommodation, accommodation, and then one day they just tell you, “Oh, you have got to move." They even took it all the way through the Courts. It's the famous line, John Marshall declared that they were "limited dependent sovereigns and that they shouldn't be moved". Jackson moved them anyway. The law didn't even protect them, even when they won in the Supreme Court. That's the famous line from Jackson: "John Marshall has made his law, now let him enforce it." Well, that's very glib, but when you think of the people that died by being moved off their own land because, "this is just the way we're doing things now". In that context you need to understand where I'm coming from; I get where the Thais are coming from on some of this stuff. 

At the end of the day, nominees are explicitly illegal in Thailand. At the end of the day, land ownership is explicitly illegal for foreigners in Thailand, unless you have the explicit sign off from the Minister of Interior. This has never been challenged; this has never been unknown. Now for years, colour of law structures were allowed to be set up that allowed foreign nationals to take undue influence if you will over Thai property. That is now being rectified. This is one of the upshots of AI coming online and the digitization of documentation pertaining to both real estate title and corporate interest here in Thailand. 

The point I'm trying to make is this isn't coming out of nowhere and this whole notion that foreign nationals are bringing something in - their “money” - entitles them to own that land fails to see and understand the importance of sovereignty. and I think the Thais, as a Thai, I think they are on the right track here, because if they don't do things like this, they could end up like the Cherokee. It's not outside the realm of possibility. What could have happened to them if they hadn't have taken the correct steps that they did during the colonial era? Would we even have a Thailand now? It's a good question. 

Now the whole argument of money, I want to read this again, I'll put this back up on screen. "Many of these larger properties are out of reach for most Thais anyway" - well they are out of reach because again as I mentioned the season of Yellowstone, where are basically, the prices are being forced up by foreign demand which shouldn't be legal anyway, and that's one of the reasons they are dealing with this now. Quoting further: "Otherwise they would already own them. Foreigners bring a lot of money to spend in Thailand." Let's talk about that for a moment. I'm going to throw up another meme I made up and used as a thumbnail in a prior video. It's from the film Schindler's List which is one of my all-time favourite movies. It's also, I have read a couple of books about him. He is one of my all-time favourite historical characters frankly, but it is this scene and Schindler's List, which is actually apocryphal; this never happened; he never sort of wooed these investors. He was just sort of handed the factory in a sort of receivership if you read his biography. But that said, there is this scene where he is talking to these guys who have been put into the ghetto and they are saying, "money is still money", and he says, "no it is not, that's why we're here". And it's that fundamental notion that we are talking about here. What is foreign paper worth to Thailand compared to their own land? And moreover, we're sitting at a true crossroads in terms of international currency, international trade, the entire reserve currency system - the entire system as we have known it - since the Second World War i.e. Bretton Woods which became a whole new thing after 1973 when Nixon closed the gold window and we went all to paper and we went on to this thing called the "reserve currency system" where one country's debt becomes another country's reserves. All of this is shifting and in light of all of this, I don't think it's intellectually out of alignment philosophically for the Thais to be sitting there reassessing everything and saying, "hey, one, we have an issue with our own sovereignty pertaining to our own land, and two, is giving up our own land really worth somebody's foreign paper? It sounds like the answer from policy circles is No, and they are taking steps to deal with it. 

Now again, as I have talked about in other videos, there are narrow legal structures that can be set up, depending on the underlying facts in a given case, that may allow a foreign national be on one of these companies. It usually involves what I call the 'shop house model' in a husband/wife kind of situation. That being said, short of that and a few other - again, I have seen discreet situations involving specific facts that have allowed it under certain situations - these nominee structures have been used to intentionally subvert the overriding policy in Thailand that a, nominees are illegal, that is explicitly stated in Thai law, and b, foreign nationals cannot own land. And I think Thais are well within their rights and frankly, I think it's very prudent to be very concerned about one's sovereignty and about the actual practical nature of one's land i.e. are foreign nationals effectively appropriating it. Because we have seen, as the thumbnail demonstrates, we have seen circumstances in the past where foreigners, then foreigners, have showed up and slowly but surely began appropriating land and then in the end, just completely dislodged the people that were originally on it. So again, I'm not trying to be an anti-foreigner advocate by any stretch the imagination, but there are ways in which foreign nationals can hold property in Thailand, and they can hold it in such a way that it's in line with Thai law and it doesn't threaten Thai sovereignty.