Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing, well we are discussing the idea of Digital Nomads being sort of legitimate long-stay individuals. And I want to be clear, I don't have any problem with people that want to come to Thailand, and I understand people, they are trying to get the best Visa option for themselves. I've been highly critical of the Destination Thailand Visa for two reasons. One, I don’t think it's necessarily good for the national interest of Thailand. I think we are importing a bunch of people and there is no real explanation as to the value added to the country of just importing foreign people in and of itself. And many people from many jurisdictions in Europe and UK and even the United States ask themselves the same question about so-called immigrants pouring into their countries. So this isn't some illegitimate question being asked about "is this good for the country? And I know I'll see a bunch of people "well we spend a bunch of money here." So? That's not the question. The question is, do having a bunch of foreign people in one's country without a lot of explanation as to what they are doing other than the vague notion that they are taking culinary classes or Muay Thai classes or something. Again it begs the question, is that the best thing for the country? And I'm not talking just purely about money and things. There's National Sovereignty questions that arise in all of that too. The other reason I have issues about all of this is the bad policy making associated especially with the DTV, has led to all of these expectations that were completely out of line with what the actual creation of these was. Now, part of the reason also for that was it was a highly politicized decision to create the DTV in the first place, to create basically the illusion of super-high tourism numbers after the first year of the Pheu Thai faction of the last governing coalition running things in order to create this kind of momentum behind the notion of Paetongtarn Shinawatra taking over as Premiere - this is going back about a year ago - and that was basically why that was all done if you sort of understand the background in all of this. In fact, it was 18 months, a year ago, that this was all sort of playing out in real time. 

So there are two reasons I have a problem for this. One, I don't think it's great for Thailand and two, I don't think it's great for the people that use it. One really big example that comes out is DTV Visa holders and anybody else in the general public myself included, had no idea DTV wouldn't be able to get Bank Accounts which that wildly changed the calculus associated with that visa. Meanwhile, as I have discussed, the whole work authorization issue is vague, vague to the point that activities going on with respect to the Elite Visas are now leaving me to believe that heightened scrutiny is going to be applied to Destination Thailand Visa holders with regard to what they are doing here specifically; that's not going to be good for them either. So again, a lot of these people, I've seen their sort of fact patterns and things, they would have been better off with different visas that already existed than this thing that they think is one thing but that is playing out to be another. That said, those are my two issues with the Visa itself. 

Going deeper on this is the whole notion of Digital Nomads. This whole thing, I remember the first iteration of this - which was about 15 years ago, 14, 15 years ago right around about 2011-2012 - that was the first time I really remember in earnest hearing the notion of a “Digital Nomad”. And understand, I was sort of the last of an old wave of how you sort of did things out here where you kind of came in and it was a lot more analog. But that said, I sort of hit the wave of original Google where everything was about blogging and search engine optimization, and so I managed to make a business model work out here that was still in line with the old brick and mortar system, so I predated the “Nomad” sort of thinking but only just. The other thing is Matt Smith who you will see out there on YouTube and he does Doug Casey's tape with him, they talk I think once a week - I tune in from time to time - they're interesting. But Matt Smith brought up a really interesting point one time in some podcast where he was talking about the problem of the Digital Nomad life is that you're never really anywhere, and there's this constant, it's kind of a, I would almost argue it seems to me to be a byproduct of social media where these folks are always trying to kind of find the next new thing; it's like their club hopping or something, but they're using countries. It's a weird sort of mentality for me who very much has sort of an immigrant mindset. That said, there's nothing wrong with it per se except for the fact that I think it's largely artificial and I think it was created, in fact I'm pretty sure now it was created by the likes of the World Economic Forum and these sort of supranationalist organizations that frankly have their own designs on what they think our personal lives should be and what they think some of our nation's sovereignty should look like, and with regard to the latter, it looks to me like they think they shouldn't have any. With regard to the former I think they think that "we all should own nothing and be happy" and that's the lifestyle they want for us. And I worry for “nomads” that it's not putting these folks in a position where they are sort of in a rooted place where they're able to deal wealth. That's the thing. If you're sort of a nomad, again it's not impossible to build wealth - and I'm not saying that people can't do it online and things of this nature - but it's not necessarily a lifestyle that is conducive, I mean it is highly contingent on a number of factors working optimally. The height of the nomad era to my mind is probably 15 years ago, right at the beginning when they came up with the notion, because cheap travel, you could pretty much fly anywhere, it was the beginning of the tech revolution with regard to being able to work - what we would now call “remotely” - and they just, it's a niche existence that is optimal if you can do it, but I don't think it's something that necessarily can be broadly done. That's I guess my point in all of this. And I'm not saying it's impossible for foreigners to come here and make their way in Thailand. No if you come here and do things sort of the way the Thais traditionally do them and understand how to business here within their ecosystem, you will probably be fine. But where you're trying to like do this thing that really has no precedent in terms of it working in terms of market economics, I think that it begs the question whether that's the right thing for those people to be doing, or would they be better off finding a different model to gain some success and wealth? I don't know. And different people have different priorities. For some people, the travelling experience is in and of itself worthwhile. 

That said, I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Bangkok Post, bangkokpost.com, the article is titled: What are Thailand's Visa changes really about? Quoting directly: "He also drew attention to the potential for those with criminal intent to simply use other corrupt means to achieve longer stays. As a member of the tourism industry, he voiced concern over the impacts of the policy switch on legitimate long-stay individuals, like digital nomads." But that's the thing. They say that "oh, we don't want international criminals who are sort of gaming our system", but then just sort of automatically presume that Digital Nomads couldn’t be doing that, or people utilizing those visas. I'm not saying they are doing that. What I'm saying is and as we'll get to here in a moment, I'm going to quote another thing. This is from Thai Enquirer, @thaienquirer over on X, quoting directly: "Thailand is preparing to cut its visa-free stay period from 60 days to 30 days as part of efforts to curb normally businesses and prevent foreign workers from taking jobs from locals, new Tourism and Sports Minister Surasak Phancharoenworakul told Parliament on April 10." It's like with this. It's the notion that knocking back the Visa exempt from 60 to 30 days is going to directly address the nominee problem in companies. Then meanwhile, quoting further: "He said data showed most foreign visitors stay only 1 - 3 days, with an average stay of around 9 days, arguing that the current 60-day allowance no longer matches travel behaviour. Those needing longer stays would still be able to apply for alternative visas such as the Destination Thailand Visa (DTV) which allows days of up to 180 days." But, again they're saying "oh by curbing this thing that allows people to stay here 60 days, we're going to curb nominee businesses" but creating something that allows people to stay for no ostensible reason in the country, they are either working remotely, so not in the country are they working, or they are doing something as vague as culinary school or Muay Thai classes, but those people are less likely to be engaging in illegal work activity, even though they're staying here longer and with no particular purpose in mind? And again going back to this notion that that “they're legitimate long stay individuals” - I've done the video on this - in South America they actually do protests where it's like "nomads go home". It's the same issue that people talk about in some of these countries, not countries, like Aspen in the United States, where people are very angry at the Airbnb culture because nobody that's local can rent anymore. Everything has become Airbnb-ified, and they are all nomads and because of this “Nomad economy” if you will, which is kind of hyper-financialized and a little bit - I hesitate to say fake but let's call it artificial - it is grafted onto the underlying economy sort of parasitically, and then local people can't work for the people that are coming in to enjoy the tourism attractions. Down in South America, again I have done the videos on this, they have real problems with it because they don't see the value added, and Thais are starting to say stuff about this. I did the videos on this about one guy down in Phuket talking about, "hey what are we doing here? we're bringing in these people for what?" Again the Immigration Act of '79 specifies people coming in and for what reason. These just made-up visas, there's no real criteria. I still don't understand the legal authority under which they create this stuff. I guess Ministry of Foreign Affairs can issue visas. I didn't know they could just make them up out of whole cloth and then basically stick Internal Immigration with having to deal with the aftermath but apparently they can, and that's what is happening.

But at the end of the day, the reason I'm bringing up this video is I'm not sure that this setup is really all that optimally good for Thailand and really frankly, it's not very optimal for the people that are using the Visas. Frankly there were better scenarios for some of them - especially those over 50 - I still say the standard Retirement Visa is the rock of the retiree visas, but okay, for those under 50, the DTV may be optimal; we have helped people get them. But that said, there are other scenarios where actually you are better off going after this because you can actually put yourself on track for things like Permanent Residence, possibly citizenship, and you can actually affirmatively work here; you can set up your company in such a way that it is tax optimal with regard to International Tax matters, especially from an American standpoint, and you can get an actual Work Permit so you're overtly work authorized, you don't have to look over your shoulder for typing on a computer. I think there are better ways to have set up a system that was more conducive to foreigners who are working in this new environment, than going with this in my opinion at this point, kind of antiquated framework of “digital nomads” which looks to me like it was created by the likes of the World Economic Forum to begin with anyway, and I'm pretty sure that anything created by them isn't optimal for anybody.