Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are asking the question why doesn’t Government rectify antiquated laws here in Thailand. I initially thought of this because there has been all this talk, especially roughly the last 18 months, year and a half, since this new Government came in, especially with the enthusiasm shall we stay of the so-called core coalition party which has seemed hell-bent on putting Chinese Police on our streets as well as creating Digital Money so we can all be tracked and traced in all of our transactions - I have to ask if there was a financial incentive for certain actors to push that idea, because I have to think that there are probably is, on at least some level. 

Meanwhile, it doesn't seem like Parliament is particularly interested in doing what really should be its job, which is updating prior laws to get more in line with the current realities, because unfortunately and this is actually one of the reasons I'm usually very, very reticent about creating new laws period, because you are stuck with them as a practical matter. Yes, you can change them later and that's the beauty of due process in a system that allows for public input and all of this good stuff. But at the end of the day, once you make a new law, they tend to be sticky, they are hard to get rid of and for that reason I'm usually very, very hesitant or reticent to create new laws and then it makes me supremely frustrated when I see new or when I see legislators come in and it seems like the only thing they want to do is create new things to hamstring the people. Again, Digital Money comes to the foreground here recently in my mind but again in reality, a major function of Parliament should be reviewing old laws and seeing if they are updated and fit for the times. 

What are we talking about here? Well, a really good example of this I got to thinking of when I read a recent article from the Bangkok Post, bangkokpost.com, the article is titled: Laws pressure small cinemas. Quoting directly: "It has been weeks since the Documentary Club, also known as the Doc Club & Pub, Bangkok's acclaimed micro cinema, suspended screenings at the site due to a licensing issue, without a practical solution in sight. To acquire a license to screen films, an operator must follow a strict building and fire code. Under the law, the club's fire prevention measures were not strong enough and it must now heavily modify its place to meet the standard. Micro cinemas like the one at the Dot Club are different. The place serves audiences of 50 at most and carries minimal risk of a catastrophic fire breaking out. So why is the same law being applied on such diverse auditoriums. This case raises questions about the relevance of the 1979 Building Control Act which put controls on screening at a time when films were screened at large theaters, using highly flammable celluloid film." 

So one of the reasons that the thumbnail of  this video is what it is, it is actually a clip from the movie Inglorious Bastards made by Quentin Tarantino, and it's part of the scene where they are talking about how at one time film was so flammable - and I think they were specifically talking about nitrate film - was so flammable that you couldn't even drive around on a streetcar with a roll of this kind of film, it was considered that dangerous. So there were Building Codes and things at the time made - it's kind of why movie theaters of the old school are so grand in their architecture it looks like - because they had to have a lot of open space due to Building Codes pertaining to this flammable film basically. Well as we now know, especially in the post-digitalization era, we are not using film like that or at least we are not using it to the level we once were so we are not having these situations where you have huge rows and rows of this extremely flammable material being stored in these places, possibly getting hot, possibly causing problems that would require the kind of architecture that most prior iterations of cinemas would have. These days, as we can see it's really not necessary but we have still got the law from 1979 to deal with and we just have it out there. 

So again, this is one of those situations where one, it's a good reminder of why, look under certain circumstances, yeah, I expect in the '70s this was probably very good law and policy. Today in 2025 not so much but we are still dealing with it. So, on one level, this is a good example of why good laws need to be passed. Another example of why you need to be reticent about passing any law because you get stuck with it for so long and finally again, rather than going around, chasing around all these pie in the sky fantasies, it would be really nice if we saw our Parliamentarians in Parliament, updating laws exactly like this one.