Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing well this whole digital money notion yet again. I thought of making two videos; I am going to go ahead and consolidate them and make one. Initially I thought of making a rather snarky video and then I decided against it because this isn't an issue I ever really intended to be snarky about. It's very concerning to me if you haven't noticed, I am pretty impassioned about this topic but at the same time I do understand folks in the Government and things are working in good faith; they are just trying to do the best that they can and being snarky isn't going to help anything. I initially thought of making this video after I read a recent article in the Bangkok Post, that is bangkokpost.com, and the article was titled: Government's 10,000 baht digital handout faces delays and targeted reductions for the poor, Deputy Minister of Finance Julapun Amornvivat says. So I thought of calling that “Shrink, Delay” and who is to pay for Orwellian digital wallet. I am not even going to quote that article because I am going to get to another one, but the thrust of the article was, first of all they have delayed it. I urge those who are watching this video, go check out that article in detail. We will put it up on screen here but they have delayed it and they have said that they are really going to retool it; we will get to sort of the nuts and bolts of that in a minute. The point I am trying to make is, I don't want to make a video where we are just going to be snarky for snarky's sake. I'm concerned about this but there's no reason to really do that. 

So time went by between the last time we were doing videos and another article came out again from the Bangkok Post, this one is titled: PM puts faith in Deputy to front e-wallet scheme. Quoting directly: "Prime Minister and Finance Minister Srettha Thavisin has defended his Deputy Julapun Amornvivat against criticism of his ability to lead the Government's subcommittee overseeing the launch of the 10,000 baht digital money hand out scheme." So first of all just as an aside, I urge those who are watching this video, go read that article in detail. A lot of information in there, a lot going on in there. One thing I do want to say and the reason I decided not to continue to kind of have a little bit of a snarky perhaps sort of a snarky undertone if you will to these videos is there was an interesting little aside in that video where they said that the Prime Minister was standing behind his Deputy on this whole thing and I thought it was kind of nice to see honestly, especially I pay a fair bit of attention to Western politics most notably American politics and man it is not a particularly collegial atmosphere over there by any stretch of the imagination. So when I see just some basic levels of decency, I keep thinking in the crazy world we live in and especially in Western politics, that somebody is going to stand up much akin to during the McCarthy hearings and sort of say, "have you no decency sir?" which sort of broke the spell of that whole McCarthy hearing notwithstanding the fact that there may have been a little more to the whole communism threat than people now give it credit for. But leaving that aside, it had spiraled into a very undignified and indecent place where it had gone and it sort of broke the spell when somebody said that. You know it was really just kind of nice to read that one person in politics had just been sort of decent to another one, so I just thought that was worth pointing out. Quoting further: "Mr Julapun has encountered escalating criticism made by some academics and political pundits after he told the media last week the details of a summary from the latest round of the subcommittee's discussions." I would like to stop there and say well he has probably encountered escalating criticism from the fact that digital money is a terrible idea and that honestly it is totalitarian in the extreme. I mean there's no other real word for it. Totalitarianism means to control people in their totality and I can't think of any measure, any singular measure on earth that more encompasses taking control of people in total than taking control or having total surveillance and the ability to turn on and off their economic transactions. I can't think of anything else that would do that short of outright slavery; I can't think of anything else that would unilaterally do that. So perhaps the criticism as I will get to in a moment, isn't so much on the program, it's on the methodology because the methodology is terrifying. Quoting further, and this is where the rubber hits the road. I think that there's some insight here and maybe we can get past this and put this behind us. Quoting directly: "The three new options are to offer the digital money to the 15 to 16 million people who previously registered in the past Government's state welfare project, to provide the promised digital money," (okay so that is one, let's go through this one by one) "The three new options are to offer the digital money to the 15 to 16 million people who previously registered in the past government's state welfare project." It is my understanding this was the project that came about during the lockdowns and during all of that between the promulgation of the Emergency Decree in March of 2020 until October of 2022, when that was rescinded. We saw a lot going on, one of them was a scheme that allowed folks that were in the welfare system to go ahead and gain some benefits and utilize certain vouchers to go get food, food stuff, things that they needed. Quoting further: "to provide the promised digital money to only those who earn less than 25,000 Baht a month", well again, it is not so much the money that bothers me particularly although when you are going into debt to give out, and that is the only thing that has been proposed at this point is debt being utilized to give out this "handout". Okay, if the whole country goes into debt, why do only certain people get it? That is why that one kind of bothers me a little bit. "Or to include only those who earn no more than 50,000 Baht a month into the new handout programme". Again, same thing. Basing it on how much somebody makes, well the whole country, if it's a debt thing, the whole country has to deal with the debt so basing it on thresholds seems like that's a little bit arbitrary. More to the point though, is the fact that it is still digital money. We have got to just not have digital money, that's the point. Look at the end of the day I really do get it. It's why I don't even agree with these thresholds because even somebody who was making 50,000 Baht a month, if they were cut off from their livelihood for two and a half years which is what happened to many people, a 10,000 "handout", now they are not going to get it because they are making 50,000 Baht or 25,000 Baht again. If what you are going for is a level of equity I guess, and I hate that word in the way it is used especially in a Western context, but if you are going for a level of equity in how this redistribution works, these thresholds of income, I don't know that that helps, and again because everyone got shut down for two and a half years. It wasn't just people who made 50,000 Baht a month or less or 25,000 Baht a month or less. Okay back to though the issue of this "15 to 16 million people who previously registered in the past government’s state welfare project." Optimal words there. State Welfare Project. Look I think it's laudable that this Government sees that there is a real problem especially in the lower strata of income earners, the lower strata of the economy if you will, of the country. Not lower in terms of anything wrong with them by people but just in terms of income, and that a lot of people got shut out of their livelihoods which they did, over two and a half years they got just shut out of their livelihoods and that has caused problems. It is very laudable that this government wants to do something about that; I am glad to see it. I agree with it in principle, what I don't agree with and what really freaks me out is digital money because it isn't money. It's complete and total surveillance; it's complete and total control over people's ability to store value, to earn their own money, to live independently and individually, to live as Thais quite honestly as I said in a prior video. Thai means free, to live as Free People basically. Digital money abrogates that, it is the antithesis of that. 

So if they say there is 15 to 16 million people who are presently registered in the past Government's States Welfare Project, let's start there and hand out just money or figure out some voucher system so that they can get some assistance, but let's not as it were "throw the baby out with the bathwater" although that's not a very good metaphor. Let's not just take on this totalitarian surveillance because people are having some problems. State Welfare has been administered in the past. Now reasonable people can disagree regarding amounts and who should be eligible, that's whatever it is and people can have those discussions. But again why is it required that we promulgate an entirely new digital money based on this need which we have seen in the past and we have dealt with in the past, many countries have dealt with this in the past. Again it is the digital money that is the issue and again as we have discussed, the fact that it can be turned on and off; the fact that it can be only usable within a given radius of where one is at; the fact that they came out and said, Mr Julapun himself said, that those who enter into the scheme and utilize this digital money will never be able to convert it into cash. They can only use it with vendors who are themselves part of the tax system as we discussed in a prior video. Again this video is not intended to lay into anybody and it's not intended to be snarky, it is just intended to bring to the foreground a serious concern I have and I think anybody should have, regarding the notion of just going to this completely new monetary system that quite honestly if anybody is just sat down and told how this works, anybody with common sense is going to have a serious problem with this scheme. 

Finally quoting further: "It is unfair to accuse Mr Julapun of changing the digital wallet project's core principles as the three new options are the outcome of the subcommittee's work, and not his own opinions, said Government Spokesman Chai Wacharonke." So, I couldn't agree more. It is unfair to accuse Mr Julapun of changing the Digital Wallet Project's core principles. I see what the principle is, you want to help people and you especially want to help people who have been put in a really bad situation by the events that have transpired within roughly the last 3 years. Totally understandable. But it is the digital wallet issue, it is the digital money issue which is the crux of at least my problem and anybody who looks at this for what it is, which is hey if you implement this system, which by the way they have said has a price tag of 560 billion Baht which from what I have read was supposed to be drawn from increasing the debt-to-GDP ratio of Thailand from 60 to 70%; I have seen a lot of and I don't want to get too much into the weeds of where the money is coming from, that's not again really overly my concern, my concern is changing money into something that really isn't money by anyone's definition of it up to this point in the history of time, quite honestly. I mean it needs to be a medium of exchange but quite honestly I don't even know that you could argue the way that this has been described, this digital wallet stuff, that this is even a medium of exchange because it is not free exchange. You can't just use it anywhere. As they noted, you can only use it with vendors that are already in the tax system; you can't convert it into cash. So then what is it? It is not money as I have discussed in other videos. Again, the core principle I get. I get what the Government is trying to do. They are trying to help people and that is laudable, I really, really can't say that enough, I can't stress it enough, it's a good thing and I actually don't think anybody had any ulterior motives here that's in the Government. I think they were coming up with a plan. This digital wallet notion is kind of a new hip thing. It is sort of what's happening now and they sort of cottoned on to it if you will and incorporated it into the broader principle of just helping people out. I can totally understand that, that makes a lot of sense to me. But at the end of the day, this "digital money" from every angle I have looked at it with the possible exception of using digital sort of markers if you will, intra Central Bank or inter Central Bank, this so-called mBridge proposal that I have actually talked about on my personal channel which is going to be a conglomeration or it is a sort of, it's working in cooperation with the Bank of Thailand, Hong Kong Monetary Authority, and their counterpart up in Dubai, up in the UAE, as we have discussed, creating this mBridge to allow offshore Central Banks from outside of those jurisdictions to be able to interact using digital money from inside different jurisdictions with Central Banks to facilitate international trade. I am not saying I am completely sold on that but I can understand the argument of why that would be a good idea moving forward. But when it comes to the consumer level or even beyond even that, not just the consumer but the national level where you are dealing with the monetary system inside a given country, I have got serious problems with it for all the reasons I have discussed - it is not real money; it can be turned on and off; they can set the proximity of where it can be used; they can set how it can be used; they can set where you can use it. As noted previously, you can only use it with those who are registered in the tax system, it can't be converted to cash. For all of these reasons, I don't like the methodology. It is not the underlying principle. It is not the underlying goal which is to help people who are in need. I think the Government's goal there is laudable but it is the methodology of this "digital money" to do that, that makes no sense to me.

Again if you have got 15 to 16 million people already in the State Welfare Project System, that is the place to start and it doesn't require this imposition of a completely Orwellian, super expensive and to this point completely unprecedented type of monetary system, in order to affect that goal.