Nuanced Thai smiles
Re: " 'Mai pen rai' paradox: from kindness to toxic silence", (Life, Jan 7). This is an excellent article, but alas goes down a rabbit hole, akin to mitigating daily road fatalities and addressing other issues often lamented in this column that we're acquainted with.
Perhaps the writer could also elaborate on how to establish whether a Thai smile is genuine or otherwise?
Bit of a problem, apparently, as there are 13 of them to use in different situations, ranging from happy to deeply unhappy, according to Holmes and Tangtongtavy in their seminal book Working with Thais, which was written many years ago but remains relevant. I hope it is still in print, as it does a very good job in explaining the Thai rabbit hole conundrum.
Ellis O'Brien
Order unravelling
Re: "How the world order looks after 2025", (Opinion, Jan 5).
Yuen Yuen Ang aptly stated that 2025 marked the "expiration" of the postwar world order. What is already visible in 2026 is that the ongoing transition has entered a more obvious and unsettling phase, acutely characterised by heightened global vulnerabilities, strategic perplexities, and profound discontinuities.
Multipolarity, climate stress, technological disruption, and fractured globalisation no longer appear as abstract trends but as observable realities, exposing the fragility of multilateral organisations and the limits of inherited frameworks. In this sense, the current challenge is not merely to interpret change wisely, but to govern uncertainty itself in practical terms.
Ioan Voicu
Productivity first
Re: "Major political parties step up campaign pitches", (BP, Jan 6).
To get the best government possible, voters should analyse core party policies, see what is most effective and which party can best deliver them. For instance, Pheu Thai's PM candidate, Yodchanan Wongsawat, pledges his party would anchor rice price support to production costs, not market prices. So, if farm costs rose, even from farmer inefficiency, Pheu Thai's subsidy would rise accordingly.
But a cost-based subsidy shields farmers from market forces, and our farmers tend to follow inefficient methods. With an average age of 59, only one in five farmers having had an M6 education, and many having large amounts of debt, our farmers struggle mightily to modernise. We have massive public debts and cannot afford perpetual subsidies.
As for the People's Party (PP), how can its core policy be improved? It wants to subsidise farmers in ways that promote sustained productivity rises. Examples of such a policy are the US's Price Loss Coverage program, which activates when national prices drop below fixed reference prices, with payments only cushioning low-revenue years to limit risk without forcing overproduction.
The US and Vietnam best resemble our rice/dairy/tapioca export profile and smallholder challenges. Both shifted post-1997 from price guarantees (similar to what PP's now proposing) to insurance-style supports. Both rice exporters now compete on quality and costs, not state dumping, with rice export shares rising despite no fixed floor prices. We should subsidise efforts to boost productivity, such as by giving deep discounts on high-yield seeds, walk-behind tillers and harvesters, and irrigation systems, and allowing farmers to combine subsidy quotas to achieve economies of scale. We should focus aid on smallholders, not large corporations.
Burin Kantabutra
