Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing recent proposals by one of the political parties here in Thailand seeking election, regarding the possibility of Super Acts in the next Parliament that might reduce regulatory "Red Tape" if you will or what some might call Red Tape; I will get into my analysis here in a minute. 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.

First of all on the 5% growth thing, politicians promise a lot. 5% growth would be a heck of a thing to deliver. I'm also kind of tired in Thai politics of this presumption that it is really the government's place to have anything to do with the economy much to begin with. What I would really like to see is a government that just kind of gets out of all of our way so we can do business, that's my thinking. That said, quoting directly from the article, again bangkokpost.com: "Mr. Abhisit said a Democrat Government would introduce two "Super Acts". The first would empower the state to eliminate outdated regulations through a single enabling law. The second would mandate the opening of government data to improve transparency, prevent corruption, and deliver more efficient public services. Real-time data, he said, would allow the state to identify labour shortages and surpluses, reduce duplication, and eliminate unnecessary re-registration. Such data would become an economic asset." 

Now remember, I did a video talking about they wanted to create a "data lake" over here and look, I have made it very clear my views on some of this stuff. Since the end of the military government - which say what you will about it – 9 ½ years went by without any real undue foreign influence especially from the likes of the World Economic Forum and places like the OECD; Thailand was taking care of its own business. Now it looks like all these "ideas" are coming in from abroad to do things like this data lake and again repeal this regulation. That said, quoting further: "Such data would become an economic asset -- supporting sectors from healthcare and agriculture to value-added production, eco-tourism, wellness tourism, and technology intensive industries. Clear data signals would help the private sector anticipate market trends with a particular focus on expanding opportunities for SMEs."

Well, a couple of things here. First all this stuff involving a data lake and everything I just find Orwellian and creepy. Meanwhile, what I hope, and I see the desire to possibly cut certain regulations, but please Thailand, let's be careful that we're not doing this at the behest of foreigners and that some of these “overly onerous” regulations might have been put into place to protect Thailand to begin with, and I think that's important to keep in mind. There is a gentleman, Chris Martenson, he runs Peak Prosperity and he's on YouTube, but he also runs his own stuff over on his own website, I think it's peakprosperity.com. In any event, him and I kind of interact a little bit on X, a little bit, and he talks a little bit about a phenomenon called Chesterton's Fence - it's a thought experiment - say you are walking along a road and you come up to a fence that bisects the road; it literally goes through the middle of a road. At first glance you're going to say, “hey, let's tear down this fence”. The moral of the story if you will, the point of the story is don't tear down the fence until you know why it's there. That's the important thing to bear in mind. Again, I'm not against pulling off onerous regulations, but if some of these regulations were put in place to insulate and protect Thailand's industry and Thailand's economy, then I think we need to be rather reticent about just doing that out of hand.

That being said, I'm not against improvement and efficiency and frankly, too much government overreach can also be a real problem as discussed many times on this channel. But I question whether or not it is really going to get better, especially when they are saying on the one hand, we are going to reduce all of this regulatory red tape, and then at the same time, track and trace every single thing because we know how well that has worked out when it's come to banking this past year. 

So again all of this remains to be seen. We're certainly waiting for the election, and we will certainly be keeping folks updated on this channel as the situation evolves.