Volume 3, Number 4: November 2019 | Article
What are the top ten cities you should visit in this lifetime? Of course, one of these interesting city is Bangkok, Thailand. Bankok is a massive metropolis with a population of 10 million which has been the capital city of Thailand since 1782. Bangkok has a variety of people, races, traditions, etc that gather and create a lifestyle that can fit into one society. Most of Bangkok tourist attraction places are about history. For example, the Grand Palace and the Temple of Dawn are things that have been with Bangkok for a long time. However, there are some people take advantage not only for foreigners but also for Thai people to maximize their utility in another word selfishness.
The first negative externality in Bangkok is public transportation. In Bangkok, there are various public transportation options that people can choose. Taxi is the most commonly seen. Many foreigners who called a taxi may suffer from the taxi driver call for price instead of pressing the meter. This shows that some Thai taxi drivers are lack of ethics and morals to serve their customers. This scam might be told when the tourists came back to their home country. Therefore, this creates a negative effect on the Thai tourism industry.
In addition, another popular public transportation is a motorbike taxi or win motorbike. Because it can deliver passengers faster when beating traffics. Moreover, the win motorbike also builds negative externalities in society. the majority of this issue is price cheating. However, at the win motorbike station, they provide a fare rate to the customer publicly. Some of them still ignore this rate and set their own rates. This means that they cheating on the price of the fare rate that the government set it for them.
The price of cheating also occurs not only for foreigners but also for Thai people. Recently, there is a report on unfavorable on the credibility of win motorbike taxi in Bangkok. Most people concern about their safety. Most of the win motorbike form them in a group at a corner of the street. Some of them form in a group of thug which could be a treat to society. They usually dispraise people who walk into their area or walk pass. Those actions generate people to use another service which easier to deal with a price and no need to doubt consumer’s safeness.
Moreover, this service comes from the online platform that you can call via smartphone. Grab and Get are the application on smartphones which provided on a private company that you can call a taxi and win motorbike in any area and any time. Furthermore, these services are friendly to the users in fare rate and security. The application also specifies the name of the service provider and time indicator to pick up and drop off the customers. This type of service makes consumers better off for many reasons that were mentioned but public transportation providers are not impressed with the private company because of Grab and Get steal the customers from them. In the news, we can see that there was a mob of win motorbike ask for their rights to serve and monopoly in transport people at Grab company and burn their official win motorbike uniform. This reflect that those people cannot accept the real world market mechanism. It is also shown that some people not familiar with adaptation in this modern society. This is why Thai people’s logic still left behind comparing to other developing countries.
The second negative externality in Bangkok is the problem of the sidewalk. Another interesting thing in Bangkok that travelers should not miss is street food. It’s generally seen that those street food sellers sometimes use the public sidewalk and pretend that it is their property or a part of the business which generates benefits to them. In contrast, people who usually use the sidewalk every day might face this action and claimed that it is a negative externality.
However, there is management from the municipal government but this is not effective because some traders bribed officials. Therefore, This problem can not be completely resolved. Another reason that Bangkok’s footpath occurs negative externality is an ineffective design from the government. For instance, this illustrates the office of the civil or related agencies is lack of labor skill to label the footpath in the right way. Disabled persons or blind people may not be able to use it as their public goods.
Moreover, this action of government may concern that they like to exclude those people from society or not? The answer is simple, Yes! Because it is a basic thing that the public sector must take care of all of the infrastructures. If the government can not have the ability to manage, it is also shown that how’s the nation work internationally. Thailand will lack the reputation in this kind of job.
Another thing that needs to concern in Bangkok is trash. It’s generally seen that some Thai people are lack of disciplinary by throwing their garbage in the public area without thinking of the consequences. For example, the garbage that has been left is causing problems for people in the area. The problem encountered is the bad smell. When it rains, some of the litter that was left behind can be causing a flood. All of the waste will clog the water pipe and collapse the irrigation system in Bangkok. In my opinion, Thai people are totally lack of disciplinary to respect other people. Because of these habits, Thailand still a developing country from then till now. Therefore, Thai people should concern this part before criticizing other people in society
In conclusion, all of the negative externalities which occur in Bangkok are in the process of being revised. Even though there are laws to support, there are a number of people who have not followed. The state or the bureaucracy should increase the penalty rates. Therefore; it will encourage people to pay more attention to society.
References:
14 Top-Rated Tourist Attractions in Bangkok: PlanetWare. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.planetware.com/tourist-attractions-/bangkok-tha-bk-b.htm.
Smart SME. (2018, May 22). จากใจผู้โดยสาร ทำไมถึงรวมตัวไม่เอา วินมอเตอร์ไซค์. Retrieved from https://www.smartsme.co.th/content/89001.
“ทำบาปคนตาบอดเปล่าๆ” เพจฟุตบาทไทยฯ ติงทางเดินคนพิการ กทม. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.posttoday.com/social/general/546057.
สงครามวิน vs GrabBike และกฎหมายไทยในยุค 4.0. (2018, May 23). Retrieved from https://themomentum.co/motorcycle-taxi-vs-grab-bike-in-thailand/.
I would like to start by mentioning that I really like the addition of pictures throughout the paper. This nicely illustrates some of the things you describe.
When you talk about negative externalities you mention taxis and motorbikes as public transportation. This is incorrect since these are both private goods, so they can be considered as modes of transportation, but not as modes of public transportation. Despite this, I agree with your arguments as to why they cause a negative externality to Bangkok as tourists location.
Lastly, perhaps you could have focussed on negative externalities surrounding traffic or tourism only. You wrote one very long paragraph on this, but you could have expanded on this. Rather you decided to not do this and focus on two other arguments. The paper would be more balanced if you would stick to one or two extensive arguments or multiple short ones, but the combination of one extensive argument and two very short ones makes the paper a little bit incoherent.
I would like to support your conclusions that apart from the government starting to revise the externalities and increase the penalty rate, the government should increase the moral senses of civic duty and altruism in the society. Despite the expensive penalty rate, rich people are willing to pay if creating negative externalities give them more satisfaction. Therefore, i would suggest another policy to teach children at school and university to think of the society as a whole , since those children will grow up and become adults that will teach their kids continuosly.
A nitpick here: The paragraph placement is rather imbalanced, and the conclusion is rather one-sided. Among miscellaneous grammatical mistakes which disrupt the reading flow.
Disregarding the fouls however, I strongly agree with the arguments present. There must be a change to several related entities.
It’s true that the negative externalities mentioned in the article are significant problems waiting for the Thai government to solve. In my opinion, the problem of sidewalk in Thailand is mainly arising because of corruption. The reason why some of the street vendors can selling on the sidewalk is because some of them bribed the officials and why the officials do not improve the sidewalk is because they are receiving an annual fund allocated for the sidewalk improvement so if the sidewalk is good and does not require much improvement, the fund would be lower. Thus, the best method to improve sidewalk is to combating against corruption.
I totally enjoy this article because my life has been entirely experiencing what the author mentioned in his work, but i want to add some more perspective and strategies. Aside from increasing the penalty rate, i think the problem needs to be fixed from its origin by creating moral or norm that would shape people discipline since child that public areas are significant. Moreover, should the government take responsibility for all Bangkok’s negative externalities such as sidewalk or trash? Moreover, I would still suggest that the best strategy for the issue is well-education system.