Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing Casino Policy yet again here in Thailand, gambling specifically here in Thailand. For those who are unaware, for the most part gambling is illegal in Thailand. There are some exceptions to that rule, the lottery for example; certain aspects of racing here in Thailand. The reason for the video is things are kind of moving along; things are kind of in a fluid state at the moment and it is looking like we may see, I stress saying we "may" see some evolution with respect to Casino Policy. 

The reason I thought of making this video was I was reading a recent article from the Bangkok Post, bangkokpost.com, the article is titled: Taking the casino punt. Quoting directly, and I urge those who are watching this video who are interested in this topic, you might want to check that out for yourself because there is a lot of information in there. Quoting directly: "In the matter of Revenue and Tax collection, the law permits legalization of casinos although they must owned and run by the state unless the state grants a concession to private businesses to operate them." Well yeah, I mean okay only the state can do it unless the state says you can do it. Okay fair enough, so if the state says you can do it, you can do it. Quoting further: On the matter of investments, the report argues the complexes will boost post COVID economic recovery. They should be self-contained and comprehensive modeled on Singapore's resort style entertainment complexes, only bigger." I couldn't disagree with that more. I don't know why here in Thailand we constantly are looking to Singapore as some sort of great example. Singapore is nothing like Thailand, at all. Singapore is a city state. Let me be clear, I am not saying there is anything wrong with Singapore, I'm just saying to adopt Singapore's model of doing things just whole cloth, is not really necessarily the way to do things. I mean we don't need to do that. Why are we I mean, I find that fascinating, we constantly look at Singapore here in Thailand and I have got to say as a naturalized Thai I don't really want to live in Singapore. I don't have anything against Singapore but what is good for Singapore is probably good for Singapore; it may not be so good for Thailand.

I have said this before and I will say it again, in my opinion folks that are really looking at this hard with respect to the analysis on what would be the best thing for Thailand, gambling is a tricky thing. I worked in the casino industry; I worked in the gaming business for a number of years actually and while I am not going to claim anything at an executive level or anything like that but I've been around it and I have seen the effects it can have. It can be pernicious, it can have negative impacts on the community and also the big thing that worries me about this notion of a complex where everything is just like there is just one place where everybody goes for that, it becomes a black hole of capital. It sucks up all of the money in a given economy. I have seen this. So-called convenience gaming especially convenience gaming in places where the jurisdiction is such that there's only one option for so-called convenience gaming, Kansas is a perfect example for this where they now have a state-owned casino, I think they have one, they may have more now but there were also what were called the native American reservations in Kansas that had casinos but they were pretty few and far between. So for example one town might only have one casino and the results of that is you get kind of all the negative insofar as you have all the problems, the societal problems of people gambling too much and all of that and then at the same time it is like a sinkhole of economic activity. You are just pulling all that money into one place. I have said it before and I will say it again and I really hope policy makers think about this if they think about bringing this to Thailand. There's a strong argument to be made for allowing smaller venues to have at least minimal kinds of gaming. What I mean to say is like maybe allowing a place to have a single card room or even have a card room or a single card table or a few, in my opinion slot machines don't really add a lot to the overall economy but okay maybe folks can have a few slot machines in a given place. The point is, if you are going to have it, it's a good idea to try and mitigate the impact, the negative impacts and a major negative impact that nobody ever looks at is it just really acts as a sinkhole for a big portion of the capital in a given economy. This is especially true and something entertainment venues should be well aware of because a lot of the entertainment money, the entertainment Baht if you will, the percentage of the entertainment wallet will kind of get sucked in again to one sinkhole.

Again, I am not saying there is any right or wrong to this but I think it is interesting that it seems to be moving in the direction of having a central place where gaming would occur and I think as counterintuitive as it might sound it actually would have probably a better impact on the community if more and for that matter smaller venues could kind of get a piece of the action if you will, because it would allow movement of the capital around the overall economy.