OPINION

Global cyber rank

Re: "Thailand makes great strides in global cybersecurity index", (Business, Sept 20) and "Govt promotes new 'digital nomad' visa", (BP, Sept 20).

It's vital for Thailand to maintain its ascendancy in the Global Cybersecurity Index if it wishes its "digital nomad" visa to be a success. Personally, I've had to decline opportunities with international financial institutions to work remotely because of Thailand's previous poor data protection reputation, as I was unwilling to relocate.

Galileo's lesson

Re: "The perils of censorship", (Editorial, Sept 20).

The Post is right to speak of "moral obligation" in the latest outbreak of attempted censorship, this time by Isoc. Such censorship is unethical. Because it necessarily enforces ignorance so that lawful opinion is gravely uninformed, it is in itself moral corruption whilst ensuring that lawful opinion is also worthless. The Post's comparison with Galileo is apt. Had Europe's papist Christian status quo had its way, the falsehood that the universe revolved around the Earth would still reign.

That is why those who value truth, who hold honesty a virtue, reject censorship on any topic, especially those that matter most to them. You cannot have informed opinion of worth on any topic where opposing views, which ideas will often offend, are suppressed. To think otherwise is as illogical and as morally stunted as thinking you can have democracy whilst disbanding genuinely respected institutions merely for suggesting that free speech on topics that are alleged to matter a lot be legal.

In fact, the use of censorship to protect any allegedly cherished article of faith from critical, dissenting, even mocking, opinion to the contrary necessarily guarantees that at best that alleged belief cannot be known to be true.

The status quo of neo-scientific Enlightenment Europe sought to suppress ideas they deemed heretical and a threat to national stability that collaterally favoured themselves. They enforced the required ignorance by brutish, unjust law.

Myanmar talent

Re: "Build a fence", ( PostBag, Sept. 22) and "Solving the Myanmar migrant surge", (Opinion, Sept 17).

Rather than fencing them out, we should welcome Myanmar immigrants as they are vital to rescuing our farmers from a tsunami of debt. Our average farm household income in Thailand was 57,032 baht per year (in 2017), drowned by average household debts of 7.89 years' earnings.

Almost half (49.7%) of borrowers will be unable to repay all their debt before they reach 70 years old. Also, our farm workforce is ageing quickly -- farmers aged 40-60 rose from 39% of Thai workers in 2003 to 49% in 2013.

Only one in five farm household heads has an M6 education, making learning very difficult. Our rice yields haven't risen over the past 10 years and are now only half those of our Vietnamese competitors.

Myanmar youth, doctors, and engineers fleeing being drafted to kill their own countrymen are just what we need to turn our farm sector around.

Give them an acculturation programme, work permits for rural areas, jobs at market rates, and a merit-based path to citizenship, so they'll help us for years while we subsidise productivity-boosting programmes for Thais.

CONTACT: