After decades of encouraging foreigners to invest in Thailand and allowing nominee structures (companies with a passive Thai 51% shareholder) to become the established practice for foreigners wanting to set up businesses & acquire land in Thailand, Thai authorities are now "cracking down".
What does this really mean?
The fundamental concept of Rule of Law requires laws to be able to be known in advance and enforcement to be non-discriminatory and consistent over time. Equality under the law. No retrospectivity. This is one of the first things they teach you in Law School.
What is happening in Thailand is the opposite of this.
The Thai government took advantage of foreigners, encouraged them to come, got them to invest time and money & create wealth for the country and then stole their assets.
Laws which were widely interpreted by Thailand's own lawyers and accountants to allow nominee structures were re-interpreted to make them illegal. Foreigners relied on the advice of these Thai professionals.
A familiar story
Jews are very familiar with this story.
It has happened so many times before in history: Egypt in the Biblical Exodus period; Ancient Rome, France, Spain, England, Germany in the 10th to 20th centuries.
Countries which are poor and lacking in crucial skills encourage talented Jews to immigrate, offering them economic freedom and freedom from persecution. Jews come and bring skillsets, assets and entrepreneurship and create huge value for the country and also become wealthy themselves. Jews also have lots of kids and grow in population.
The country becomes much more successful, but jealousy of Jewish success, resentment of Jewish difference and fear of Jewish fertility leads to anti-semitism, asset confiscation and Jews leaving.
The country then declines and ultimately fails and disappears from history, often to be remembered only by the Jews themselves.
Is it anti-semitism if they target other foreigners too?
The "crackdown" started in Koh Phanghan, an Island particularly favoured by Israelis and with a large Israeli community estimated at 7000 people. There are also other foreigners on this Island: Brits, Russians, Indians etc, but on Koh Phanghan, unlike other places with large ex-pat communities, Israelis are the majority.
Was The Holocaust not anti-semitic because the National Socialist Workers Party of Germany also murdered Romani & disabled people.
But they broke the Law!
Thais never enforce even basic safety laws. It is a pretty lawless place where the government has little regard for human life, especially if foreigners are involved. They allow boats with Chinese tourists to go out packed to the gills in a storm and then blame foreigners when disaster strikes.
The foreigners who set up businesses in Thailand relied on the advice of Thai lawyers and accountants who promoted these nominee schemes. This was well known and had been going on for decades. It had become established practice.
How is a foreigner who doesn't speak Thai or have many Thai connections meant to know the law except by engaging local professionals?
Israelis & other foreigners who used these nominee schemes didn't break the law.
The government has retrospectively re-interpreted the law to make practices that were well established as legal become illegal.
Selective enforcement of a law and especially retrospective re-interpretation is an anathema to Rule of Law and the certainty that is required to make long term investments.
Consequences for Thailand
Thailand's Total Fertility Rate (TFR) is below 1 (less than half replacement).
They are not a rich country like Japan or South Korea who have the resources to decline gracefully.
They are facing the devastating scenario of getting old before they get rich.
They NEED immigrants and are blessed to be attractive to talented, peaceful, asset creating people like Israelis and other First World ex-pats. Not the violent, rapey, leaching other sort of immigrants Europe mainly gets.
What would you rather?
Immigrants that come legally, create businesses, invest talent and money, are peaceful, don't rape your women or assault your men or try to impose their religion and culture on you (but just want to maintain their own) or ones which come illegally, don't work, abuse your welfare state, engage in violence and sexual abuse and try to impose Sharia law.
Thailand is showing extreme ungratefulness for the blessing of being attractive to good immigrants.
Asset confiscation is a very short term gain.
Without the entrepreneurs that created these businesses putting their money, energy & talent into the businesses, they will quickly decline.
Israelis have exceptional talent, substantial wealth, high fertility and lots of options. Thailand will lose its favoured status.
Thailand will decline and collapse into low fertility poverty.
The video I linked above concludes that this "crackdown" presents an investment opportunity for foreigners to buy distressed assets and "do it right". But, to its credit, it then outlines just how difficult that is to do.
I totally disagree with the video's conclusion.
Once countries start heading down this path and turning on foreigners who have brought prosperity to a poor place there is rarely a turn around.
Its time for Israelis and other foreigners to get out of Thailand and find more friendly places to foreign investment. El Salvador and Argentina come to mind, but there are also other places in the Pacific.
Israelis also need to understand that the only place Jews are truly safe to invest for the future is Israel.
But if you really want a break from Israel, chose a country that is early in the encouraging foreign and Jewish investment stage of this historical pattern, not one that has already reached the ungratefulness stage.
