Let's talk about money, and the Thai Navy

The other day I was talking about how a particular political party is appearing lately to be trying to buy off the public in order to get their votes with promises of giving hundreds of dollars in "free crypto" if they get into power. While I think most of us here can agree that getting involved in crypto is mostly a good thing, I think that most of us can also agree that there is no such thing as "free" when it comes to the government.

Politicians are full of idle promises and in the past in Thailand, when some politician actually DID follow through with their promise to give people something that she promised while on the campaign trail, the products were trash and I would be surprised if any of the items are still around. She also got ousted in a bloodless coup.

The thing about promising free things to a populations of around 80 million people is that if you do actually follow through, this can get really expensive really fast and if you wander around this country for a bit outside of the glamourous tourist areas, you start to notice that the government and the country generally speaking, doesn't even have any money to be promising new projects with. The government can only make money by taking their population's earnings and just like in most other countries, Thailand spends it on things that don't always make a lot of sense.

In a race to be one of the strongest countries militarily speaking, Thailand purchased and aircraft carrier some years ago and has never used it. In fact, they don't even have any aircraft that would be capable of landing on it.

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It is called the HMS Chakri Naruebet and outside of grandstanding events, it has never been used. At one point in a particularly massive show of idiocy, they put tanks on board it... because that is what AIRCRAFT carriers are for, right?

It is also a bit laughably known as the "smallest aircraft carrier in the world" and could only really function as a launchpad for helicopters rather that fighters. But Thailand doesn't use it for that either. They don't use it for anything and the only recorded time that it was used at all other than just to show off was during humanitarian aid projects during the tsunami of 2004. They apparently have no intention of ever using it as well seeing as how it doesn't even have a functioning anti-aircraft system on it. It would be a sitting duck if it were ever to be faced with a real military threat.

This ship cost an estimated $336 million to create and there were grand plans to outfit it with aircraft that it can actually use. However, the type of aircraft necessary to operate on it went out of production at the turn of the millennium and while some effort was made to find older aircraft to purchase for parts, the Navy was also faced with the fact that their pilots were not trained in this sort of aircraft and disaster would likely follow if they were ever to try to land on it.

I have read that this monstrosity is only in use one day a month for training purposes and the rest of the time it sits in dock as a tourist attraction. One that even with an admission fee, is never going to break even on the expense associated with it.

I use this as an example of how the government cannot be trusted with any expenditures because Thailand never needed this vessel but just did so anyway so that they could be the first nation in South East Asia to ever have an aircraft carrier. Whether or not they needed it, or were capable of operating it, didn't seem to matter to the politicians that were involved in green-lighting the purchase.

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So if the idea was to get onto this list and that was the only objective, congratulations! You made it! But at what cost? The cost of having any sea-worthy vessel doesn't end just at the purchase price, it costs a tremendous amount of money to maintain any boat and I know this just from people that have had boats. Even when dealing with something that is significantly smaller, the costs of maintaining a simple single-hulled sailboat can surpass the cost of purchase just in a decade. I can't even imagine the massive cost of maintaining something of this size.

The Thai wasteful spending doesn't stop there though because even closer to now they were involved in purchasing some Soviet-era submarines because: Reasons.

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While this notion might have been a naval officer's wet dream, the rest of the population wasn't all that excited about it. This is antiquated technology that if up against a modern nation, would be eliminated almost immediately before it could even carry out a purpose. These are diesel powered submarines, presumably because Thailand is not allowed to have anything nuclear, and with modern technology it's "hidden" location could be identified quite easily and eliminated if need be. It is one of those things that it would perhaps threaten your much weaker neighbors like Myanmar and Cambodia, but that is about the end of it. If this was the intention, we must look at the fact that the neighbors can't really even afford a Navy at all and therefore something modern and underwater isn't necessary to pull off intimidation in the first place. If Thailand were ever to attempt to threaten say, China with this, the Chinese would just laugh at the notion especially since China sold them the submarines in the first place.

At nearly $400 million per boat, this purchase was met with massive resistance from both opposing parties less interested in military might, as well as the population at large. Why is Thailand spending billions on naval craft when the people are starving? I suppose we could look at almost all of the world's military in the same light though so don't think I am trying to throw shade only on Thailand.

Other instances of wishful thinking spending would be best exhibited not in the purchase of a gigantic weapon of war, but when Thailand tried to implement large-scale technological solutions such as when they attempted force the population to use a QR code scanning tracking app during Covid times. The idea of the system was sound, but it simply didn't work. I recall trying to go places like the airport or shopping malls and massive queues would form at the checkpoint to use this system only to have the entire system inexplicably fail and eventually the gatekeepers just let everyone in without scanning anything. The system simply wasn't capable of functioning and it was quietly scrapped after spending God knows how much money on the rollout.

So when the government comes along and states that they are considering making their own token, and giving away large sums of money to the population in order to facilitate its widespread use, I am very reluctant to believe that there is any way that it can work in the first place, let alone whether or not the government actually has the funds to make it happen.

Be very leery when confronted with a politician promising free stuff! There is a very good chance that this person or persons doesn't have any idea about the complications of rolling out such a project, nor are they very concerned about if it actually is possible. All they care about is getting elected and then they can iron out the details later once they are in power. Since overthrowing of the government is basically a national sport here, it wouldn't surprise me if we have a couple more of those in the next decade or so.