Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are asking the question, does Thailand really need more, do we need more laws to be able to freeze people's assets? And bear in mind we are coming off this past year of all kinds of weird developments and Orwellian rules regarding banking and face scans and account freezing, to my mind without much of any due process, where they are just freezing the account because they say a "mule account may have interacted with it”. To my mind it's creepy stuff. 

That said, I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Bangkok Post, bangkokpost.com, the article is titled: Abhisit vows clean politics, 5% growth. So for those who are unaware, former Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, I remember him from some whatever it was, 15 years ago, where we had the whole red shirt thing in 2010 and then he was actually PM after sort of the flip in the Parliament if I recall in 2009, and a lot went down. I, on a certain level, I have a fairly healthy degree of respect for Mr. Abhisit insofar as I do believe he is somebody operating in good faith, trying to do what he thinks is the right thing for the country to a certain extent. That said, even if somebody is operating in good faith, reasonable people can disagree, and that's kind of what I came to after reading this article. Quoting directly: "The Party he said has already begun scrutinizing financial trails and would intensify enforcement to restore investor confidence." So what they are talking about there is, again some of this sort of nebulous notion of going after scammers and things, but that said, this was the part that gave me pause. Quoting directly: "Measures would include Emergency Decrees to strengthen asset seizure powers for unexplained wealth, greater transparency in financial transactions, and expanded oversight of cryptocurrency and modern money-laundering channels." Well first of all, I'm sick and tired of the notion of money laundering. That whole word was created in 1987. Prior to that, it was called privacy. You don't need the government to know every little thing, and again this whole notion of "we may need to strengthen asset seizure powers for “unexplained wealth". 

It's not on me to explain myself to the government at every turn how I make my livelihood. This is ridiculous. I don't have an affirmative duty to any government to “explain my wealth”. Now if you catch me engaging in criminal activity, catch me, charge me, but this notion that they get to track and trace all of our money, and we don't have any privacy in financial transactions is nonsense to begin with and it's Orwellian totalitarianism on another level; I'm tired of this. I'm really tired of the politicians playing into it and pretending like it is somehow a good thing and just an inevitability. It isn't. You acted like this about COVID and I have noticed you're trying to gin something up with this Nipah virus or whatever which I am not even going to get into that, but all of this is just pure overreach. People do not have an affirmative duty to “explain” their wealth, okay? And look, these banks are private enterprises. We are the customers. It's our money we are putting into these things. What is going on here? I'm tired of this, "oh well, we don't have to explain ourselves, but you have to explain everything about yourself." Where is the legal authority to have done any of this to begin with? I don't really see it, and then secondly, going into this election, the big thing is going to be new powers to seize people's assets if they can't explain their wealth? Frankly, I will pass on that policy, okay. So that's sort of where I stand on this. 

That being said, we will certainly be keeping folks updated on this channel as the situation evolves.