Pumipon was a willing tool of the military, who constantly staged coups and obstructed democracy and the economic development of the Thai people. For Pumipon, this resulted in great rewards. He amassed so much wealth from the work of others during his reign that he became the richest man in Thailand and the richest monarch in the world.
Yet he preached, through the “Sufficiency Economy Ideology” that his “subjects” should be happy in their poverty and always opposed any redistribution of wealth. Thailand is one of the most unequal countries in Asia.
His toadies had to constantly project a photo of him with a drop of sweat falling from his nose. The photo was always the same one, since Pumipon seldom did anything to work up a real sweat.
Unbelievably, his followers wept when the Palace released a photo of him tying his own shoe-laces without help from any servants. He allowed the use of crawling and special royal language in his presence without any sense of shame, and he passed on his warped and elitist view of the world to his dysfunctional children.