Thailand's 'gilded age', the 'robber barons' and the 'what's next?' question

We have to thank the opposition for doing their homework well, both for the just-concluded censure session and the one before. Their well-documented research has raised the public’s awareness and wariness of the many and various crooked ways our tax money is being wasted. The opposition has also taken several cases to the National Anti-Corruption Commission, which could eventually see the axe fall on this government.

As in the United States during the so-called Gilded Age (1877-1897), Thailand is undergoing a period of rapid growth, rampant corruption, crooked politicians and rising inequality in wealth and its distribution. More notably, we have our very own “robber barons”, characterised by their sense of invincibility and total impunity. We also have to continue swallowing the gravel as we contend with our own Pharaoh Ramesses II – who appears as Ozymandias in the poem by Percy Shelley (1792-1822).

The street demonstrations are growing and gaining more momentum, but no government has ever been overthrown, nor wholesale and systemic corruption ended, without violence.  And most of us would agree that we should not go there.

America’s Gilded Age is being repeated today in emerging economies such as China, Brazil and Russia, where unregulated capitalism has brought rapid growth and spiralling inequality both in wealth and in people’s standing under the law. At the same time, legal channels to challenge policy are either inadequate or absent. The US Gilded Age finally brought a strong response of genuine reform. Americans realised that the corrosive political process had to be halted before progress and more equitable distribution of wealth could take place.  

But it took the US more than a decade of political reform under president Teddy Roosevelt’s Progressivism to root out “robber barons” such as Andrew Carnegie, JP Morgan, Cornelius Vanderbilt, John D Rockefeller, Andrew W Mellon, Leland Stanford, Henry Flagler and the Astor family. And it was not accomplished before the gargantuan project of building the Transcontinental Railroad.

It is worth noting that several of these American “robber barons” went on to become renowned philanthropists. Andrew Carnegie gave away more than 90 per cent of his wealth, saying philanthropy was the “Gospel of Wealth”.  These private monies were donated to thousands of universities and colleges, hospitals, museums, opera houses and public libraries, and were an important factor in the US’s blossoming as an industrial economy.

This is perhaps where the Thai “robber barons” part ways with their American predecessors. Our “robber barons” are true believers in the modus operandi of “OPM” – using Other People’s Money to increase their wealth, and keeping it all to themselves. Thai banks’ wealth-management departments for “high net-worth” individuals are growing by leaps and bounds, along with the number of overseas bank accounts, and cash “investments” in construction projects for 5-6 star hotels, property developments, luxury-car dealerships, etc. Dirty money thus becomes clean.

The Progressive movement helped spawn an era of social and political reform in the US. The question now for us Thais is, who will be our Teddy Roosevelt?

Roosevelt was one of the youngest presidents in American history, but he also proved to be a “bully” both at home and abroad. However, he was influenced by the so-called Muckrakers – journalists who uncovered corruption in politics and business while shining light on social hardship, prompting him to draft a package of reforms known as the Square Deal. It was meant to protect consumers, tame big business, support the legitimate labour movement and conserve the country’s natural resources. His eagerness to tackle massive cartels and monopolies with the Sherman Anti-Trust Act (1890) earned him the moniker “trust buster” – a mantel taken on by his handpicked successor William Howard Taft.  Another progressive president – Woodrow Wilson (in office 1913-21) – ushered America into a new era of aggressive reforms called the New Reform deal and further regulated big business. He passed the Clayton Anti-Trust Act to replace the weaker Sherman Act.

 We Thais can take inspiration from the US’s experience, where corrupt practices under “robber barons” grew out of control before being tamed by successive leaders who cared and dare to act against them. We should continue to express our discontent and retain the hope that there will be light at the end of our dark tunnel. Real peaceful change has to come from the top down, otherwise we get revolution. 

We don’t know what’s coming next, and our Roosevelt has to emerge, but history has shown us that the hand of time eventually tips everything into equilibrium. 

As to the future of our very own Ozymandias, the poet Shelley offered a prediction:

“ I met a traveller from an antique land

Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone 

Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose 

frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless 

things,

The hand that mocked them and the heart 

that fed:

And on the pedestal these words appear:

“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.”