Sanitsuda Ekachai's blog - Latest comments on Ministry of misery

In response to: Ministry of misery

Sunthorn Skulpone [Visitor] — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 18:37:46 +0000

This is in response to comment 10 and 11:
Thank you, Carl for defending me. You are wrong about me, Thai 2. My father own 48 rai, do you call that a rich family? No need to google, I will tell you my story here. I was the first one in my family to go beyond 4th grade. I have 8 brothers and sisters. I graduated from a Thai university in Electrical Engineering. I went to graduate school in England and continued on to America for further study. I have five children, one boy and four girls. After sending them all through colleges, I have nothing left. I feel to this day, us villagers got the short end of the stick. There must be land reform in Thailand. So, let there be no one doubt that I am from a rich family!

In response to: Ministry of misery

carl [Visitor] — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 00:11:10 +0000

To comment 10: FYI - If you google Mr. Sunthorn and read his story (first link, you can't miss it), he is actually from outside of Bangkok - the North Eastern part to be more precise. Was he born into a rich family? well, I guess we'll never know for sure. However, the village where he was born apparently only had up to grade 4, and he had to stay at temples to go to school in a nearby village. If you check his other Bangkokpost postings, he does seem to display a fairly intimate knowledge of the Northeastern villagers and their culture. So if he is from an elitist uber wealthy Bangkok family, then he is a very rare specimen indeed!

However, I think you also misread his comment. Mr. Sunthorn is actually advocating for the poor - and not against them. Based on my understanding, many of the poor folks in Thailand live off rented land. If they do have their own personal property, then they would only have a few rai at best. So by limiting land ownership to just 50 rai per family, he's directly targeting the wealthy people and not the poor folks - because let's face it, most of the latter will never be able to afford even a fraction of that 50 rai quota in their entire life time anyway.

However, on the issue of land ownership restriction, this has been and always will be a thorny issue in Thailand. Basic economics tells us that any quota system would eventually lead to dead weight loss on society, as people with the available capital and knowledge to make the best use of land are essentially restricted to their 50 rai allocation only. So in that sense, Mr. Sunthorn's solution is not ideal. However, the problem with Thailand is that there are also many rich landowners who have the tendency hog their land and leave it 'fallow' for speculative purpose - which meant that dead weight loss is created anyway as a result of such monopolistic behavior.

Again, I believe all this problem of landownership is exacerbated by the fact that a large chunk of land in Thailand is controlled by a select few, whilst the majority owns very little or no land at all.

In response to: Ministry of misery

Thai 2 [Visitor] — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 09:03:11 +0000

It is obiously Sunthorn is from the rich family, just to read his comments, that along telling me that he rather see dictatorship system instead democracy installed government. I wonder if he is not member of Newin corruption project that spent 1.44 billions on the planned!? The farm people are so poor and lack of education as well. Some barely make it to end-meat, now they are talking about limited their land also. From where they would earned their money for taxes that this Mr. PM raising!? let along find food to feed their children! Just think about this!? This government shows nothing but individual gains. General election needed badly so all people in the Land of Smile can smile again!

In response to: Ministry of misery

noi [Visitor] — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 22:22:23 +0000

Who owns the plup factory that benefit from cheap eucalytus wood? Perhaps the Forestry Dept. is doing a good job for someone or an organisation that even the lips brave goverment will not touch.

In response to: Ministry of misery

Desmond Malone [Visitor] — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 20:21:22 +0000

No Comment at the the moment!

In response to: Ministry of misery

Sunthorn Skulpone [Visitor] — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 16:21:06 +0000

This is in response to comment 5 and 6. I do mean 50 rai per family not 5 rai per person. I made a mistake on 0.5% rent, I meant 0.5% tax per family per year. In regard to government control of land in the Soviet Union, it failed because there was no incentive for the people to produce more than the quota. Look at China during Mao's time, same problem as in the Soviet Union. There were wide spread hunger. When Deng took over the seat of power, he changed the law to allo people to rent land for 99 years, Chine ended up producing more than they can consume within a very short time. We human being have these thing we call greed. Sometime if a little greed is tolerated, then it is a good thing. You know a big greed that convicted criminal in Dubai have should not be tolerated. I am surprised that none of my classmates call me and say " you are crazy, Sunthorn."

In response to: Ministry of misery

carl [Visitor] — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 12:54:24 +0000

Not trying to change the subject, but I would like to point out that the Federal government of the United States apparently own one third of it's country's land, according to: http://www.whoownstheworld.com/about-the-book/largest-landowner/ You can also see a map here: http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/2008/06/17/291-federal-lands-in-the-us/

Yet there seems to be no major public outcry about the issue of state encroachment on US citizens. This could be due to a better legal system and a less self-serving attitude of the US federal government officials. However, I think there is also another explanation; Forbes ran an article which shows that the biggest private landowner, Ted Turner, only control a fraction what the US federal government control. Even when you add up the top ten landowners, it's still not that much.

http://ask.yahoo.com/20040608.html

So perhaps the real problem in Thailand is that there are also other institutions/private individuals who control large swathe of land, but are not leasing them out to the common people? Therefore, when the forestry department starts to encroach on what is available to the remaining 60 million folks (say, 10% of the country), the situation is made even worse? It would also be very sad (though not unprecedented) if some how these top ten land owners are also exempt from the new property tax.

So regardless of wheher Mr. Sunthorn's solution is a sensible one (does he mean 5 rai and not 50 though? I thought 320 million rai divided by 60 million = 5.33 rai per person and not 50 rai), he does raise an important point: just how much land is available to the common folks? However, before we start drawing conclusions, does anyone have a break down of Thailand's land ownership numbers? Methinks having some verifiable, hard numbers would really help!

In response to: Ministry of misery

Peter Mothe [Visitor] — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 23:39:12 +0000

Sunthorn, do you not see that in this case government is the problem? With all the corruption and patronage that has been crippling Thailand for so long, do you really think that government control will increase efficiency of the land? You are seeking to install a Soviet-like system which far from being Marxist, where I assume your ideology wrongfully lies, is much closer to a state capitalism. As we saw in the Soviet Union and everywhere else, this government controlled capitalism is a failure, and its this type of government intervention that created this problem in the first place. Give the lands back to the villagers and let them, not the government, decide what to do with their lands.