Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing this so-called "digital wallet", "digital handout", "digital money"; whatever you want to call it. Let me go ahead and get into it. I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Bangkok Post, bangkokpost.com, the article is titled: Jatuporn: Wallet policy 'could inflict fatal wounds'. Quoting directly: "He, (and he being Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit, the Head of the Progressive Movement suggested that the money earmarked for the handout policy would be better spent revamping Public Transport, Public Health, Water Management, Environmental Protection and the Education System." 

Yeah it's been clear, if you have been watching my channel, I have been highly critical of this whole digital wallet, digital money thing. First of all because I have huge issues with this notion of "digital money". I think this is a Trojan Horse; I think it will ultimately undermine the freedoms of Thai people; I think it will result in the mass surveillance of everyone's business transactions which honestly there is nothing wrong with privacy. I understand Law Enforcement's perspective where yeah they want to know everything about everybody so that they can enforce the law. Well you know what? That is as scary as I can ever imagine. That's a terrible idea, mostly because as we saw with COVID, things that were perfectly acceptable behaviour one day, were anathema to polite society the very next. So again, privacy is a reason or a way to mitigate against some of the worst aspects of group thinking, human nature I would say. That is one of the reasons I am very much a proponent of privacy. The other one is I don't really subscribe to the notion that anyone should have this sort of "all seeing" capability with respect to people's personal transactions. That just doesn't make a lot of sense to me and I think it's a bad idea just generally. 

But setting that aside, on top of that and I want to be very clear when I say this, I don't want to sound unsympathetic to people who have had a far harder time the past few years than I have had and at the end of the day, the reason people had a hard time in my opinion is because the Governments of the world lost their minds, shut down all of our economies and didn't let us get on with our lives which brings up the question, did they even really have the right to do that to begin with? That is a question for another video, so let's leave that where that is. 

But long story short, the reason people are having a bad time is at the end of the day to sort of invoke the spirit of Ronald Reagan and his "Government is not the solution to the problem. Government is the problem" - the Government shut down all of our economies. The solution to that is not “super surveillance money” or “internet money” that can be surveilled; that is my only point. That said, I am sympathetic to people that have had a hard time and I find it laudable that the incoming Government is trying to do things to help people but I often wonder if a. a handout is the best way to go. There were a lot of handouts in America during the whole COVID lockdown thing and it's had a massive detrimental impact on in my opinion both the economy and society over there. It's resulted in a lot of quite honestly, what's the right word, just people having the wrong mindset about living their lives. Quite honestly the last time I saw it was when I went to Russia in 1999 and I watched how it took a great deal of time for that country to sort of de-Sovietify in terms of its mindset, in terms of people knowing that "hey you have got to kind of hustle to make your money" you have got to work", that's the way sort of market economics, that's how it operates. And we had a lot of that mitigated I think in the United States by giving out just "free money" which now people are realizing isn't free, causes inflation, down the road causes all kinds of unforeseen problems. Again same deal here. One, I don't think it is the Government's place - I am not a Keynesian, I don't believe it is the Government's place to intervene in the economy directly although in certain instances I have seen where it works here in Thailand. Again Thailand is unique, but that said, a handout is something very different and I don't like it, I don't like the idea that anyone here in Thailand needs a handout. We are going to get on with it, we are tough. Thais are at the end of the day kind of the embodiment on an individual level of rugged individualism. You want to ever see rugged individualism, go down and look at the woman running a street cart selling 'Kao Mun Kai' on the street  here in Thailand; that is a rugged individualist for you. Quite honestly, I think providing a handout hurts that mindset; it hurts that whatever, that spirit that people have to just get up and get on with it. 

Now again, people who truly need help need to be helped but again there are alternatives and as we discussed that there has been a huge debt increase that they have talked about in connection with this does not now seems to be a priority but again who knows, we will see what we see. But again, things like Public Transport, Public Health, Public Water Management, Environmental Protection and the Education System, they can use some assistance perhaps. Again people that truly need help, if the government figures out a plan to help them, I am never going to say that is a bad thing but I think it is very rational and prudent to question a) the notion of a handout in and of itself and whether or not that is good for society to be going around just handing out money. We can look at the West and see what the ramifications of just handing out free money is, it ain't good. Meanwhile this "digital money" scheme in and of itself is frightening at an Orwellian level and then on top of it, there may be other places where this capital could go to improve Thailand more. So all of these are good questions. I don't necessarily have the answers but at the end of the day we will keep you updated on this channel as the situation evolves.