Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, I need to stand corrected. I did a prior video where I was asking "hey are they just doing this Digital Wallet by legislative Fiat?" Is there going to be some sort of Parliamentary due process associated with the Digital Wallet? And I did not see at the time that I made that video, it was not clear to me that that was happening; it now appears that it is happening.

I thought of making this video after reading a recent article in the Nation, that is nationthailand.com, the article is titled: Another hurdle cleared in Digital Wallet scheme as the Additional Budget Expenditure Act gets through first reading. So this is the enabling Act - the Additional Budget Expenditure Act - which I think - they have played a lot of games with explaining where they are going to get the capital for this so-called “digital wallet” endeavour. As we noted in other videos, this thing is going to require two times, two orders of magnitude more liquidity than already exists in the banking system. Then on top of that, as we have discussed, it's not real money. This is this digital money that they can, Central Bank Digital Currency that they can decide what you can and can't buy with it; they can decide the parameters physically, where you can use it; they can also turn it off after a certain duration of time. That's not money by any stretch of the imagination or by any definition that I have ever heard it. That said, quoting further: "After a 10-hour debate on Wednesday, the House of Representatives voted 297 to 164 to approve the principle," so to approve in principle, I think is what they mean, "of the Additional Budget Expenditure Act for fiscal year 2024, which allocates 122 billion Baht to fund the Government's handout under Digital Wallet Scheme." 

So again the notion that this is a handout already like irks me. This Neo Keynesian stuff of just handing out money, it's basically socialism by subterfuge, and as Joseph Stalin once noted, "Communism is Socialism in a hurry". So we see the track we are kind of heading down with all this “free money” notion and it is especially pernicious in my mind when you look at it from the standpoint, it's not only the issue of “free money”, it's also the issue of that money being basically the tool of total financial surveillance. 

That said, quoting from Khao Sold English, that's khaosodenglish.com, the article is titled: Thai lawmakers approve $3.4 billion additional budget for Digital Wallet. Again this is $3.4 billion! Where is Thailand getting this from and what else could this be used on? Think of the infrastructural projects and things, but no instead we are going to create a digital token that will track and trace everything, creates no new value in the system and if anything just creates a bunch of taxable events so that the normal rank and file Thai can just be taxed all the more. And bear in mind, that we are having to go into debt or we are expending large amounts of the budget to do this, which would presume we will go into debt later for things that we would have otherwise needed the Government to undertake paying for. So one way or the other, it's just going to be the rank and file that are going to have to pay this off, and for what? To be more surveilled in our financial undertakings? I don't understand the point of that. That said, quoting directly: "Subsequently, the assembly appointed a 32-member Special Committee to consider amendments and present them to the House of Representatives for consideration in the second and third readings on July 31st."

One thing that I really hope folks in Parliament will take a look at not passing this in the second and third readings because at the end of the day, when you really drill down and get into what this means and what this could mean for the country, I don't see how a great deal of benefit is going to be garnered to the average Thai person by just creating a bunch of Fiat currency out of thin air that's basically a tokenized system whereby their minuscule, micro financial transactions can be completely monitored at all times. To call this Orwellian is a massive understatement. I truly, truly hope cooler heads prevail and the members in Parliament who are reviewing this matter, really seriously considered just not going through with this.