Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing gambling in Thailand. This has been a topic that has been kind of on some folks' minds here the past roughly year because there has been serious talk about legalization of gambling here in Thailand. I thought of making this video after reading a recent article on Thai PBS World, that is thaipbsworld.com, the article is titled: Report on Casinos to reach Thailand's House of Representatives on Thursday. Quoting directly: "The Committee is also proposing in the report that entertainment complexes to be built in Thailand must be bigger than those in Singapore and that the projects should be joint public-private investments and be managed as a Special Administrative Zone, such as Macau." Hmm, well okay, interesting there.

One, the Eastern Economic Corridor is very much akin to a Special Economic Zone as we have discussed at length in many other videos on this channel and there seems to be a lot of synergy of thinking or similar thinking if you will, between folks that are discussing legalization of gambling and some of the proposed regulations and some of the policies that we are kind of seeing which sort of under gird the EEC here. So that's an interesting thing to point out. 

Now this is kind of a little bit of an op-ed but again I have said this before and I'll say it again, as we have seen in prior discussion of this, there may be a way that this actually occurs, I will get to that in a minute. But what I am talking about is 'bigger is not necessarily better'. I do understand the thinking of 'okay if we are going to do a Casino let's make it bigger than anything in the region' presumably to attract more folks to that particular complex. The thing to always keep in mind though is gambling is a double-edged sword. I have worked in the gaming industry; I have seen the impact a Casino can have on a community that did not have gambling and then did have legal gambling. There are good things that come about from it: job creation, tax revenue for example, and then there are not so good things that come out of it, most notably yeah there are folks that just have real problems with gambling and if it is readily accessible, they will have real problems keeping themselves from spending away all their money. That is a fact, I have seen it, it happens. It is a real problem and it has community wide implications. If you think of other "vices", if somebody goes out and they drink too much alcohol, generally speaking, if they don't drive and they make it home, their biggest problem is a hangover but if you go out and you blow all your money in the casinos, that can have knock on implications: you may not be able to feed your family; you may not be able to pay your mortgage payment, all kinds of problems can come up from that. As we have discussed in other videos, I am rather a bigger proponent of a more, I hesitate to use more populous but sort of a broader application allowing certain gaming activity. My big one is Card Rooms, especially 'non-game-of-chance' card rooms. What are we talking about here? Basically poker. Few people take into consideration that truly Poker is a skill game; Poker is very much a skill game and when you're playing Poker, people are playing against each other, they are not playing against the House that is just sort of like a Hoover vacuum of money. So again, I have said this before and I will say it again, gaming licenses which could and they have talked about this through special excise taxes and these kind of mechanisms, it may be possible to see some gaming activity at a much lower level, sort of at the lower economic strata where you might you might have a bar and grill that has a card table or something, this might happen, I don't know how this is going to look. 

The reason for the video is again, bigger might not necessarily be better, under all given circumstances. As well, it's worth noting that where one big giant Casino exists and just starts sucking in money, it starts to act as something of a Black Hole, an economic sinkhole if you will and it can have tremendous negative implications for the community. At least with more broad licensing where people can do things in sort of a "Mom and Pop" level, it is much more akin or it's much more conducive to at least money getting spread around the overall community, not just going to one Black Hole where the negative consequences are affecting the whole community but the benefits are really going to only one particular place. Again that is just my two cents on it. I think it would probably be better if we saw maybe a little bit more broad legalization in terms of again, I like the paradigm of Card Rooms; I think Poker would be wildly popular if it was allowed to be in Card Rooms more spread out throughout the country but then like what I call true gambling, what we used to call gambling on the floor. There was the Poker Room, poker was poker, and then there was the floor which is things like Blackjack where you are playing against the House, gambling; Three Card Poker you are playing against the house, Roulette, Crap, Baccarat these kinds of things, you are playing against the house. Those things I think should be kept inside of a casino complex and I think it is well worth looking at allowing Card Rooms for Poker specifically to be allowed on a much more broad basis.