Every now and then, when bump to these funny policy news, I start thinking what might have been the thinking in the minds of the people who come up with them. This one triggered that thinking again.
In private world, at least in my experience, there is always a thorough thinking of the purpose of the offering as well as thinking thru the logic and value proposition from target audience (customer usually) point of view, trying to understand how the targets thinks about the offering, what's the value proposition, and what are the key issues in customers mind that lead to positive choise.
Trying to think this one with that approach I just can not get the logic, even trying to think with Thai mindset. I understand countries (like Cyprus) that sells passports to Russians as they see the value to get EU passport. I understand payments for retirement visas in number of countries as retirees see the value in those places based on their personal preferences. Even understand the Elite visa as it gives easy residence for sub 50 people who want to live here for whatever reason (often tax reasons involved I guess, especially in Thailand).
However, for who this 3.2M work visa is for I just can not get it. People who want to work or have work permit here, there is much easier/cheaper to get the visa than 3.2M and the paperwork. People who want to invest 3.2M or more, they invest regardless of getitng visa or not, and many will actually get some other visa anyway because of the reasons behind the investment (business). And people who just want to invest without need for residence, they see little or no value for the Elite visa.
My conclusion behind this one is the logic of gambling/lottery - as we know, many Thai like that for habitual/cultural reasons. People in the Elite office probably thought this like using the effort to buy a lottery ticket i.e use little bit of effort for something that is very unlikely to create positive outcome (someone paying the 3.2M), but the effort was small, comparable to 100baht lottery ticket, and the reward even if very small probability, would bring big reward in case some ignorant people actually would end up buying it.
Or could it be the lazy drunkard fisherman approach i.e fisherman too lazy to fix the old broken net, yet he goes out with his boat and throws the net into sea in hope of getting a big fish (all normal sized will go thru the holes), even if likelyhood is really small? Actually this is kind of variantion of the lottery logic.
Or is it just that they try to do a small upsell (i.e sell the elite visa as value add by-product) for those who buy a condo here, and see the incremental Elite visa cost to be small increment to overall package, getting some additional benefit with it, work permit being a small incremental offer without any cost to goverment?
Go figure