Prosper Australia

Karl Williams

July 2008

It’s one thing to calmly read statistics about climate chaos but a completely different experience to hear the frightening stories from the disaffected.

In the remote north-eastern Thai province of Nan, listening to a 60-year-old café proprietor relate how the climate has changed in her lifetime, visions of a freaky future of climate chaos hit me in a way that no peer-reviewed scientific forecast would ever do.

In this woman’s entire childhood, summer temperatures had never risen above the low thirties, but now the mercury hits 40 and beyond most summers. Moreover, whereas the monsoonal rain season used to last for a good five months, now it’s usually about three. Such changes haven’t progressed gradually, but have exhibited wild gyrations that are evident in the very landscape.

While wealthier residents of Bangkok can today still mask these unsettling climate changes with a casual adjustment of their air conditioner, those in the countryside are forced into a personal concern with what they’re suspecting is just the beginning of climate chaos spinning out of control.

Yet the economic reason why we’re rushing headlong into the abyss is not hard to fathom. Without fully costing the consequences of our use of fossil fuels, we effectively provide a set of subsidies to keep on wreaking environmental destruction.

Looking on the positive side, we have real hope in the form of the elegantly straightforward geoist principles of applying natural resource charges which would force each polluter to pay for the consequences of their actions and hence provide a stiff disincentive against further polluting.
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The Economics of Thailand

Karl Williams

A conundrum wrapped in a paradox is perhaps the best way to describe Thailand, and its economic system is no exception as our rolling travelogue will illustrate. To pick apart this puzzle, I had the assistance of the only two geoists in Thailand, who were also my gracious hosts in Bangkok – retired vice-admiral Suthon Hinjiranan and his son Pop, who has a PhD in town planning. Suthon recently translated “Progress and Poverty” into Thai and is battling alone against a tsunami of cashed-up property developers but, like a true Cat-Seer, agrees that “everything else is a waste of time”.

Firstly, a few basic facts on Thailand: population – 62 million (32% in urban areas); life expectancy – 70 years; GDP per capita – US$9000; ethnicities – 75% Thai, 14% Chinese and 11% other; religion – 95% Buddhist; literacy – 94%; economic system – speculation-fueled neo-classicism tempered by traditional cultural values. But let’s dig deeper to unearth how the vast proportion of Thais earn a paltry A$4 or $5, alongside an obscene number of brand new urban assault vehicles (4WDs) cruising the streets?

Why are there sparkling new skyscrapers and shopping malls alongside sprawling urban slums and vacant land?
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Karl Williams, Editor of Progress Magazine

What I’m about to write here would almost certainly land me in jail if it were written in Thailand. I’m about to criticize its monarch, King Bhumibol.

Yes, dear reader, it may be hard to believe that, in the 21st century in a modern and supposedly democratic nation, such a draconian punishment can still be meted out, but Thailand is the Land of Surprises in more ways than one. But, stranger still, this “respect” accorded to the king is not enforced by the police or secret service, but by the overwhelming majority of ordinary citizens. You see, so all-pervasive is the massive royal propaganda machine that the Thai citizenry themselves so wholly believe in the goodness and greatness of their monarch that they not only enthusiastically obey and serve their king, but vigilantly enforce obedience from any who might dissent.
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