Transcript of the above video: 

It appears that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in yet another, I don't know why Ministry of Foreign Affairs doesn't just sort of do what they do, but I don't know, they seem to want to constantly kind of branch out or something; I don't know how to put it. That said, I thought of making this video after reading a recent article in the Nation, that's nationthailand.com, the article is titled: Thailand's Foreign Minister outlines plan to restore Global influence, focuses on proactive diplomacy. Now as you get into in the article there is sort of a crux to it, and this was to my mind the crux, the distillate if you will that gets to the point of all this to just cut through it all. Quoting directly: "Under Economic diplomacy. This is considered the most crucial strategy. The goal is to transform the Ministry of Foreign Affairs from a ceremonial body into an active force driving Economic Development." Well first off, MFA has never been just a ceremonial body. My first visas to Thailand were issued by the MFA. Most folks that come to Thailand on a Visa, are issued by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. There's nothing purely ceremonial about them. So, I never like any type of new idea when it's predicated on, "this was the way we were doing things, and we're changing that." That's not the way we were doing things. MFA was never a purely ceremonial body. They have a function. Primarily one of them being Consular Processing, Visa Processing which they seem to not want to do. They want to do other stuff that frankly seems to lie in others' bailiwick, most notably in the situation involving the DTV Visa rather recently where that was purely the brain child of Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and then it was foisted upon Thailand's Interior Ministry and upon the Interior Immigration apparatus to just sort of deal with, with not the greatest of results, especially when it comes to Thailand's Brand and everything as it pertains to expats and foreigners looking to travel here. I would argue the DTV has been something of a Public Relations disaster in certain ways because again as I have discussed, MFA came up with it on its own, it touted it as one thing and then the results were totally another. And that was not MFA being a ceremonial, (what was it that they were calling it) ceremonial body, that was them not really issuing good policy and gaining consensus with internal Immigration regarding the Visas they were issuing. So again, I don't like this whole premise that MFA is changing because it's no longer this thing, when it never was this thing they are claiming they're changing from. MFA has a purpose. Frankly, I wish they would concentrate more on Consular Processing and actually processing visas, rather than, I don't know, trying to do whatever this is.

Look, the last Government, particularly what I refer to as the Rump Coalition, basically the Pheu Thai Party, engaged in all of this celebrity politics and it's nonsense. It's frankly from a bygone era. It wasn't a good thing then, we don't need it now, which is, "oh we are these celebrities and we are politicians, and we strut about after we get in office, but we never really do anything and the things that we do tend to kind of contravene all the ways of doing things heretofore." For example, like visas for example, where they created this thing purely as a brain child at Ministry of Foreign Affairs in order to make frankly Paetongtarn Shinawatra look good when she was coming into office and the result was a Visa that was not fit to purpose; a Visa that was sold one way but operated another way, and has resulted in bad PR for Thailand because the people using it thought they were getting something they ultimately weren't really getting, and operationally, it's not really working the way they thought it would work, because again internal Immigration here in Thailand was not consulted. It was just imposed upon them effectively by the MFA, who if they were a ceremonial body then how did they impose all that; it's a nonsense predicate is what I'm trying to say. 

That said, quoting further: "From a ceremonial body into an active force driving economic development." Well MFA's function is to have relations - I mean this is my understanding, it's like the State Department - have relations with outside countries. It's not to per se ‘drive Economic Development’. That's like the Ministry of Commerce, the Ministry of Industry, or Tourism and Sports to deal with Tourism Development; those are the folks that do that. Ministry of Foreign Affairs', their remit is pretty clear, it's in the name. Foreign Affairs, not driving economic development. They are not the Ministry of Driving Economic Development and by the way let's talk about that real quickly. 

This is a whole notion that I have seen utterly thrown under the bus since I was a kid. I remember being in the '90s, back in the United States, and like people from my grandfather's era and even my parents’ era, although they seemingly and I hate to use this term, but it seems kind of appropriate, folks from the boomer era, seem to be kind of brainwashed out of this, they don't seem to recall this now. But there was a time during the '90s where the notion of Government activity in economics was anathema because we all know that Governments don't do a good job at economic stuff. And when they get too much in the business of economics, that's called a command economy, that's called Communism; it could be called Fascism depending on the circumstances. It's totalitarianism. It ultimately doesn't work because command economics don't work. The market dynamic is what will inevitably result in, not the best outcome, but the most efficient outcome. Yes, there are times when government regulation for purposes of health and safety or national priorities and things comes into play, but the notion that the government "needs to be an active force driving economic development", that's very communistic in terms of the thinking. 

Now I've discussed this before in other videos, what was it Stalin said? He said, "Communism is Socialism in a hurry", or something roughly translated to that. I've often said that there is an addendum on that which is "Keynesianism is Socialism by subterfuge." Unfortunately due to the doctrines of John Maynard Keynes that we have all been stuck with since the Bretton Woods system was created in the late '40s, and we have been dealing with that iteration after Nixon took us off gold, we went into the Petra dollar system. We still are operating under this Keynesian presumption and actually Alastair McLeod, McLeod Finance on Substack if you want to find him, he does a really good job of laying this out. He laid out something brilliant in the past where he brought up the fact that folks that come from former Communist countries like the former USSR, they don't fall into this Keynesianism, Socialism trap because they have already been through it, and they can immediately see it for what it is which is, “oh that's just Bolshevism, that's just Marxism” when the Government is engaging in the business sector, the economic sector directly and proactively. 

So again I bring this up. This looks like a bad idea just from a policy standpoint. We've already seen MFA has been out coming up with their own ideas and the blowback from that. Now they seem to think that they're "an active force" or they are going to be an "active force" driving Economic Development. I have issues anytime any Government, in any form, is trying to be an active force in economic development because I'm just waiting if for nothing else, than Murphy's Law and the Law of Unintended Consequences in an economic sense, because there are always unintended consequences when the Government starts getting in there, and pushing around like a bull in a china shop when it comes to economics. It's just a fact. We've seen it over and over throughout history. That said, quoting further: "Opening business opportunities and fostering understanding of new technologies like AI, digital economies, and the green economy." What exactly is the Ministry of Foreign Affairs' expertise in business opportunities. I thought the Ministry of Commerce dealt with that and don't BOI and the Ministry of Commerce have attaches at the various Thai Embassies and Consulates abroad? Shouldn't they be dealing with that rather than MFA directly? I state again, how about we worry about visas at MFA. You want to help business opportunities make it easier and more efficient to process a visa. And by the way, we are now helping a number of clients on a daily basis deal with the new e-Visa portal. Yeah, it's not the easiest thing in the world, and I've been dealing with the National Visa Center in the United States for about a decade now and their digital portal, yeah neither of them are great. None of this digitization helps with anything. In fact, it feels like neo-Sovietism put on a digital platform; that's what it seems like.

I think MFA would be much better in spending their time and resources worrying about processing visas which are clearly within their remit, in a more efficient manner than things like AI and Digital Economies. What does the MFA have anything to do with any of that? To my mind it looks like the MFA would do a better job using their resources to maintain good services within their own sort of lane if you will rather than worrying about all this stuff. And quite frankly I find it really troubling and it seems to be kind of the holdover paradigmatic notion from the last Government, this notion that we need to stop having it be a ceremonial body, which isn't even the case to begin with. MFA is not a ceremonial body. You have to actively deal with them. We dealt with them a lot during COVID in getting Certificates of Entry issued etc. Then they created the Thailand Pass; we had to deal with them during that. There's nothing ceremonial about them. Yes, they deal with diplomatic protocol. They are the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; that's their function. That doesn't mean they are purely some sort of decorative Ministry. Again, the entire predicate underlying the notion that this needs to change and need to take an active economic role is in my opinion bogus to begin with. 

So again, that's sort of the point of this video. My thinking is MFA would be best to go ahead and concentrate on Consular processing if they want to help the business community here in Thailand. Ease of getting Business Visas issued. Not ease, but efficient processing based on the rules would be better in my opinion than going off effectively tilting at windows, excuse me, tilting at windmills in some quest to become an active force driving Economic Development not only makes any sense with regard to MFA's mandate but it's also not good economic or political policy for the reasons I've already outlined.