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something that mechanically can be imposed on other people or introduced to
other people that they automatically see the light and so on.
As I said, with the 2007 UNDP report, there was a lot of reaction against
it. People didn’t like it because it seems to be against growth, but it’s not. To
my knowledge, it’s not against growth per se. It’s just… it has to be, the
growth has to be thought about. You just don’t grow and say let it rip and see
what happens. You have to think about what kind of growth is appropriate and
how can it be designed in such a way that it helps the poorest first. And it
does not lead to problems of ecological collapse. So, by introducing the
sufficiency economy thinking, first of all, we get people’s attitudes being
changed. A few people I know in Thailand are thinking in a different way about
society and production and economies, and so on because of sufficiency
economy philosophy. But that’s not good enough. Of course, what has to
happen after that is that people have to vote on the basis of for people who
will be cut back.
Most politicians achieve success not by saying I’ll help you cut back. They
get successful by saying I’ll help you get more and more and more. And that is
a way of proceeding in the past that works, actually, but I don’t think it’s good
enough now for all kinds of reasons that many people point out about climate
change, absence of resources or finite of resources. Some of my colleagues
analyzed that we already consumed more than the globe produces on a
sustainable basis. We over fish. We over harvest woods. We over, over, over,
and the only answer to that is to get cut back, to reduce the consumption.
But it has to be done in a way that’s intelligent and it has to be done in a
way that we democratically choose to do it. It won’t work if we just try to
impose it on people. So, in terms of the, what I’m calling here at the
democracy desiderata, these are just the elements that the King Prajadhipok
Institute identified for the following days, that I saw in the agenda in the
outline. These are six topics, and all of them can be seen as being enriched,
I think, you have an attention to sufficiency economy philosophy, guiding the
way that they are approached. You can, for example, set up electoral systems.
I don’t know what mechanics are the best about the electoral system. There
could be all kinds of different ways you can elect people as we know. Those
0QFOJOH LFZOPUF BEESFTT of how you set it up, if people don’t vote for politicians, who will help them
are the experts. You can talk about that and they will, I’m sure. But, regardless
collectively cut back as necessary, and figure out how to proceed with growth
in a constructive way? Then we’re in deeper trouble. We could be in deeper
trouble than we are now. So, the sufficiency economy helps create the attitudes
which reinforce the structures, which reinforce the attitude, just as this one of
the examples, and I’m almost finished here.
