Bangkok Protest 5 - Sufficiency Economy

[Monday, February 16, 2009, 5pm Thai Time - well that's when I started. I let this set yesterday while I did other things and now it's Wednesday about noon.]

Note: This is going to be somewhat rambling as I'm ruminating on this topic. In some ways it is new to me, in other ways it's old, but with new names. So consider this an exploratory look.

As I'm reading the English version of the Recommendations for the New Government, the policy recommendations made by the Thai Land Reform Network (or Network for Thai Land Reform, depending on who's translating), a coalition of organizations representing farmers and other poor Thai communities, I'm being pulled in different directions. I support the basic sentiments, but I think that the arguments could be better organized and documented.

As an US citizen reading this, one who lives in a red state (bizarre isn't that a 'red state' means a conservative state?), I've been sensitized to expect strong criticism of anything that isn't strongly pro-capitalist. The six months we lived in Portland, I was constantly surprised at how the liberals were as free and loose in their philosophy as the conservatives are in Alaska. But when you are always about to be criticized, you're forced to think about what you believe much more carefully and how to justify it.

And my academic training always wants an argument to so logically lead to the conclusions that the attentive readers already knows the conclusions before they reads them.

Anyway, this document basically assumes that the government has strong responsibilities to redistribute land to poor farmers, and I think it is this part that makes me feel, as a member of one of the organizations, vulnerable to challenge. I say that knowing that a document like this in Alaska would be blasted as 'socialist' (by people who probably couldn't tell you exactly what socialist means) and un-American. Of course, I'm not in the United States now, so that really is irrelevant. Also, I don't think you can really call it un-American after first the Bush Administration gave out $700 billion or so followed now by the Obama Administration doing the same. And, of course, both the US and Alaska have given away land to homesteaders in the past as well. But I would like to see this document's arguments better organized. There were a number of declaratory statements like this one:

Land is a social resource and an important productive resource. Thai society needs for there to be a just and fair distribution of land holdings so that the poor and small-scale farmers can have their own land for use in building up food security and security of settlement. . .

The phenomenon of land that is being held for purely speculative purposes, with an owner but not being put to productive use, indicates the injustice in land holding patterns in Thailand. This land should be used for production and distributed efficiently and appropriately for the benefit of landless farmers and the poor who lack land for settlement.

OK, I thought, you can say this, but many would argue that owners have the right to leave their property 'unproductive.' You have to link this to something that shows this is basic Thai policy or at least congruent with Thai values.

So, finally I got to the part of the document that mentioned Section 85 of the 2007 Thai Constitution (oh my, the Thai Constitution is 97 pages long, while the US Constitution is only 17 pages). But before I get to that, let's go back to another reason for concern about grounding these arguments.

I'm also thinking of my former student (forty years ago) who I visited Thursday on the way back from Bangkok. His grandparents immigrated to Thailand from China maybe 70 or 80 years ago with almost nothing. They took what little they had and bought a plot of land and planted bananas. They lived in a very basic house - I was in it a number of times in 1967 and 1968 - that had no electricity and water came from a well outside. It had a dirt floor. Every baht they had, they reinvested into land and production of bananas. They are no longer alive, but their son and grandsons have a great deal of land planted mostly, now, in sugar cane. Mook lives in a comfortable house and has, by anyone's standards, a good life - both in terms of material needs and spiritual needs. As I was reading the document, I could hear him saying, "My grandparents came here with nothing and worked extremely hard for their land. Why should the government be giving away land to farmers?" In fact on Thursday he bemoaned how hard his mom worked, going out early (before 7 am) every morning with the cane workers and getting back about 5pm when she would prepare food for all the workers. So, I want to be able to respond to Mook.

Additionally, I know there are lots of examples where rich investors were able to corruptly gain title to land. The document briefly cites some examples:

. . .there are many cases of land use/ownership documents that have been issued illegitimately and illegally. This applies to private land and land used by communities, such as land for production, community forests, public land, and land distributed by the Agriclutrual Land Reform Office. This land, for which use/ownership documents have been issued fraudulently, was often later deposited as collateral for loans, on which debtors defaulted. In these cases, classified as non-performing loans, the banks sue in court, seized the land, and sold it on the market. However, the land then sat vacat, as if abandoned. When the people adopted measures to solve the problem of land in a just manner by carrying out land reform themselves by occupying and putting this land to use, the state used its legal power to arrest and prosecute the landless poor.

As you can see, things can get messy.

But let's hold off on that line of reasoning for now.

I want to raise the issue of "Sufficiency Economy" which I found in Sections 83 and 84 of the Constitution.

Part 7
Policy Directive on Economics

Section 83. The State shall promote and support the implementation of philosophy of sufficiency economy.

Section 84. The State shall follow the Policy Directive on Economics as follows:

(1) Encourage a free and fair economic system through market force, and encourage the sustainable economic development by abolishing and refraining the enactment of laws and regulations supervising the businesses that are inconsistent to the business necessity; shall not engage in an enterprise in competition with the private sector, except it is necessary and beneficial for maintaining the security of the State, preserving the common interests, or providing public utilities.

This unofficial translation has been provided by IFES Thailand and the
Political Section and Public Diplomacy Office of the US Embassy-Bangkok.


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(2) Promote the practice of virtues, ethics, and good governance in business affairs. . .

(8) Protect and maintain the interests of farmers in production and marketing; promote the highest price possible for agricultural products; encourage the grouping of farmers in the form of the farmer council in order to work out on the agricultural plan and protect their common interests. [emphasis added]

That sounded vaguely familiar, or maybe it was just that I'd heard both those words before - Sufficiency and Economy - but I looked it up and found it was a philosophy put forth by the King of Thailand. The King of Thailand, by the way, is the longest reigning Monarch in the world. He was born in the US while his father Prince Mahidol was getting his MD at Harvard. He was educated in Switzerland and he has a long history of taking a strong interest in the spiritual and economic well being of his people - all people of Thailand including members of ethnic minority groups. He's well educated, plays jazz saxophone, is (at least was, don't know about now) an avid photographer, and traveled extensively around Thailand to meet with ordinary people to understand how to make their lives better. No, I'm not working for the palace, this is my sense of him having paid some attention over the years. He has been King for over 60 years now. He's truly a remarkable man.

So, this is not some backwater monarch coming up with some nationalistic plan with no practical basis.

As I googled and read more, this appears to me more general principles, not a micro-economics plan. But it attempts to balance the needs of people and communities against the realities of international capitalism. From Reflected Knowledge:

Sufficiency Economy advocates taking the middle path in life as the optimal route for personal conduct at all levels: individuals, families and communities. It counsels moderation, self-reliance, honesty and integrity, while exercising knowledge with prudence.

Sufficiency Economy posits that an individual should be able to lead a reasonably comfortable life without excess or overindulgence in luxury. That is, if extravagance brings happiness it is permissible only as long as it is within the means of the individual. As His Majesty stated in a Royal Speech on December 4, 1998, “If one is moderate in one’s desires, one will have less craving. If one has less craving, one will take less advantage of others. If all nations hold this concept of moderation, without being extreme or insatiable in one’s desire, the world will be a happier place.”

Economics professor Mehdi Krongkaew writes in a Kyoto Review article:

The philosophy can be summed up in one paragraph, as translated from the Thai:

“Sufficiency Economy is a philosophy that guides the livelihood and behavior of people at all levels, from the family to the community to the country, on matters concerning national development and administration. It calls for a ‘middle way’ to be observed, especially in pursuing economic development in keeping with the world of globalization. Sufficiency means moderation and reasonableness, including the need to build a reasonable immune system against shocks from the outside or from the inside. Intelligence, attentiveness, and extreme care should be used to ensure that all plans and every step of their implementation are based on knowledge. At the same time we must build up the spiritual foundation of all people in the nation, especially state officials, scholars, and business people at all levels, so they are conscious of moral integrity and honesty and they strive for the appropriate wisdom to live life with forbearance, diligence, self-awareness, intelligence, and attentiveness. In this way we can hope to maintain balance and be ready to cope with rapid physical, social, environmental, and cultural changes from the outside world.”

There's a Wikipedia article on localism in Thailand which discusses Sufficiency Economics which also includes some criticism, but this particular feature caught my eye:

Loan.

Another example in the philosophy: one must save money enough before investment, and do not overinvest such that you become deep in debt. Some believe this idea is in conflict with the concepts of economy of scale and economy of scope in economics and exploitation of the future demand.

It seems to me in the aftermath of the crash of the US housing market, this sort of philosophy should have a much better reception in the West than it might have had a year ago.

Overall, I think that black and white, good versus evil, picture that many in the US have of the world is not an accurate reflection. Rather, the social world is a complex set of forces constantly in tension. I think the King's sufficiency economics reflects that better than much of what we get in the West. There's a sense of moderation that we can also see in Greek tradition in Western heritage. There is a recognition of the need to be prepared for unforeseen catastrophes. As I visit different villages, I see farmers, with which my organization works, who are able to feed themselves through their farming and would be much more self sufficient should this economic crisis get worse. Certainly they are much better prepared than most people living in Alaska who are totally dependent on the outside world for nearly everything we consume.

So now I'm left to try] to recraft the document, taking the points they have, and reorganizing how they are presented, and getting more information in some areas. At the very least, I'll understand this all better afterward.