Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are asking "does getting a beer need to be this Orwellian?" I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Bangkok Post, bangkokpost.com, the article is titled: Night venues warned to respect late opening rules. Quoting directly: "All customers must show their ID cards on the mobile app ThaiID, a rule meant to prevent forged ID cards, and the night venue areas will install facial recognition security cameras to record all patrons." You know, when you are looking at making policies and I do understand, as a father and just as a person out there who is concerned about young people, yeah, I get it. You don't want kids out drinking a bunch of booze, I get it, I truly do. But I think you have to do a cost benefit analysis of these things. First of all, is the forged Thai ID market really that vibrant? Like I am sure, I was a kid myself, and fake IDs are what they are but do we need to, just to get a beer now you have got to log into an app. and then have facial recognition and all of this stuff. Is the cost to liberties as a Thai, really worth the benefit of maybe the odd 17-year-old doesn't necessarily get a beer, I don't know what the answer to that is exactly. In my opinion it is not worth, the juice is not worth the squeeze if you will! The end result of maybe, okay we have sort of forestalled or mitigated against any kind of underage or a great deal of underage drinking, that is certainly a laudable goal, but is it worth that level of Orwellian undertaking just to have a drink? I just don't think so. 

So again, now will this be massively implemented? I kind of doubt it, but it is one of those things, it is kind of one of those things that creeps up on you and after Covid, I have got to tell you my hackles just get up anytime I ever hear about any of these cockamamie ideas that governments come up with regarding, "oh you need to have six forms of IDs and we are going to have to take your retinal scans in order to do XYZ!" I just think it us a bit over the top and when you really do a cost benefit analysis of what has been given up versus what benefit is being gained, I am not sure that the logic bears out.