Sir Dude

Thaksin needs to be impeached and dealt with, as he is a huge negative on Thaland and it's politics.

Thaksin is pulling the strings like a puppeteer with a marionette, can't believe the locals are swallowing it and think it's okay... what a load of BS. Well, I guess countries get the governments they deserve.... sheep-pleople

Agree too, despite our slight differences... there is much common ground on some things. o7

I attempted to address your concerns to my last post with you as best I can... but I stand by my assertion that going completely cashless is folly for so many reasons. I was distracted by someone else... but what I posted on the topic still stands for me.

I can probably last about a week with normal stuff, as keep enough food and water for 7 days all the time... I also like the outdoors and get into the countryside, so have military MREs with FRHs ordered from Shopee that could last another week too... yeah, outdoor nerd here, I know. And, on top of that, you could stretch that out to more than 3-4 weeks by fasting and only eating once a day and getting your body to survival mode... so it would be possible. Although, as you say, in freezing cold countries, you would be further challenged by the temperature... but here in Thailand, good to go.

Whilst true what you say, you also missed the word "barring". If the electricity/internet goes out for a week or two, then cash would be it.

Going completely cashless is supremely dumb for so many reasons, let's have a look at some: 1. The first and most obvious reason for not doing it is that we, the public, are handing far too much power over to banks, corporations, and governments... and we all know what a bunch of bankers they all are. I'm uncomfortable with the bank and government knowing every tiny little thing I spend money on... might lead to social scoring (even secretive) like in China where if you spend too much, in their eyes, on say beer or something, you lose points and become less socially viable. That is a dangerous and dystopian road. 2. It is good that there are different ways to pay for things as some are more appropriate for some things than for others. It's called choice, and anything that takes away choice from you is taking away your freedom... the more choice you have, the freer you are. 3. There needs to be a currency that can be used in troubled times, barring complete and utter collapse of society and it's instituations... cash is it. What will you do if the internet goes out? How about no electricity? 4. Satellites can go down and malfunction, bad actors can cut internet cables under the sea, unleach EMP weapons etc. etc. How about if there is a huge solar storm or coronal mass ejection that hits the earth just right.... only a matter of time, remember the Carrington Event? When that happened we were lucky we were only using telegraph, as it would be very distructive if it happened again. People talk about "hardening the grid" but an estimate of how much it would cost to just harden the US grid would be $25 billion or more, plus take a massive amount of time... not sure if there is the political will for that. 5. If there is only one way to pay, then if it goes down, society will implode much faster than if people have access to cash as a stopgap until things normalize. 6. People say it will cut down on criminality, but in all honesty, the more we digitize everything, the more fraud, hacking, and online scamming is happening... so the criminality would simply shift online, not go away. 7. The removal of the right to privacy, which some might argue has already vanished... would be undoubably gone, period, but I kind of covered that a little in number 1. I still use cash as much as possible as I dislike, and don't trust, the authorities and banks not to use the information for some end, or just sell it whilst they build up a financial profile of everyone. Look what an information treasure trove the cash handout apps are or the Covid app was... can find out almost anything out about everyone. Bet the intellignece agencies were have a party when you combine those with all the data people freely share about themselves on social media too... facepalm. Think I'm paranoid? Think of all the corporate data centers that are being set up everywhere, and all the intelligence agencies around love data and info because, well, you know the old phrase "Knowledge is power". I bet most people would be astonished if they knew how many corporate and government agencies knew so much about their lives in tiny details.

Collasping demographics are happening almost everywhere, probably for similar reasons, which I'll mention a few below: 1. To encourage families to have more children, and women in particular, you need to have decent family-friendly government policies... it needs to be worth it and for people to know they will get quality support from the authorities. 2. Families used to have large numbers of children because some wouldn't survive, the ones that did were free labour on the family farm/land... and maybe one might make it and do well, thus helping the rest in the future. Once you have everyone moving to cities and living in apartments or smaller areas, lots of kids are just problems and mouths to feed. 3. To have children, most people need to feel confident about the future and what it might hold. Without this positive sentiment, then many people simply don't think bringing children into a tough and unprosperous world, where it's almost impossible to progress well and the middle classes are fast shrinking, isn't such a great idea. 4. Women want careers and to earn money and may well put-off having children until they are financially secure. 5. Lots of men available simply aren't good father material and many women are catching on the the scoundrel "shoot and scoot" MO of your average oxygen thief in most places. 6. Having children and bring them up so that they are healthy and educated now costs a fortune... along with all the things Gen z and younger feel entitled to. For example, the wife's niece is like 12 years-old and is pestering her father for an Apple Ipad. 7. The direction the world is going in has taken a sharply negative curve in the last 15 years... so not sure having kids is such a great idea at the moment. There will be more, but that's just a few obvious one. However, a smaller world population may not be such a bad thing from an environmental persective. Governments panic about it because you now have too many older people and not enough younger people to work and pay taxes, so worry about how to pay for everything... the old "Aged society" thing, but they should have seen this coming long ago and done something about it. Basically, countries that have this problem (and that inclusdes Japan, China, South Korea, North Korea, Russia, Thailand and many more etc.) have two choices: Either, 1. Allow mass migration like Europe and the US has done to make up the numbers... but look what a mess of problems that has caused. If you do this option, then it has to done correctly, i.e. only allowing people in that have skills and something to offer, can work, pay taxes, and not commit crime or relentlessly remit all they earn abroad. Europe is in a mess because it has completely ballzed this up. 2. Ecourage your native people to get married and have kids through very generous and family-friendly policies (such as free government-funded childcare etc.) that make it benefitial to have kids in society, rather like it used to be. Neither option is easy to do, and can cost a lot of money, but many countries are heading down this difficult road which ends with some very hard choices to be made, and kicking the can down the road just inevitably makes the decision more painful the longer you leave it (got to get their heads out of the sand). This demograhics problem will only worsen as time goes on, and I read a detailed report about by the late 21st century, only subsaharan Africa will have healthy demographics... for example, there were more children born in Ethiopia last year than the entire EU. Certainly food for thought. Okay, I've rambled on longer enough already... good day to you all.

There are lots of reasons why the auto industry in Thailand is in trouble, lets do a list: 1. People are swamped in debt. 2. Banks etc. simply aren't lending on big ticket items like cars and houses like they used to through fear of NPLs. 3. Thailand is swamped with high quality repo or almost new second hand cars that are stacked up along every road for sale. 4. Electric cars are not the panacea we were led to believe, and they are a few problems... - such as cheap Chinese quality - expensive repairs - battery technology is going to change soon from liquid litium to solid fuel batteries, and good luck if you get stuck with a liquid one after that - price of electricity is ever rising plus still too little charging infrastructure - electric vehicles are still expensive, whereas ICE ones aren't - electric vehicles have a bigger carbon footprint to make than ICE cars do... take a while to offset that - still not enough government incentives/subsidies to convince many to change - replacing a EV battery might cost you a 150k baht after a few years - buying a second EV is for the crazy folks, especially here 5. Price of ICE second hand cars plummeting. 6. Oil/gasoline/diesel power isn't going away anything soon. 7. People are putting off purchases and saving in many places as they are simply not confident about the future... it's often called "sentiment". 8. Governments, not just here, everywhere are making a tax grab on folks and business. People don't like it and hide their money instead of spending it. There's probably more but can't be bothered to list them.... that's enough for starters.

Well, the usual advert for such a flawed religion... I could go on, but would be censored by the thought police.

Lol, the lefty morons having a meltdown because they can't dig freedom of thought and opinion... the irony is so thick. Maybe the majority don't like your lefty oppression and Biden was a Richard on so many fronts... it's called introspection, and that needs to happen. Sorry, but I'm no big fan of Trump but what has happened is hilarious... snigger. Hope all you lefty morons do some soul searching, as you are clearly out of touch with the US public if this has happened... stop living in fantasy land.

But but but ... whataboutarry. We aren't talking about the Tories here, it's liebour, stay on topic. Usual moron response.

Well, we can always go back to the dark ages and not emit anything. I wonder if all these eco-morons can deal with no more international travel, no cheap supermarket goods, no avacado toast or coffee, little global trade and shipping, no cheap electricity or fuel, no abundant food of every description etc. etc. etc. It's about acceptable transition, and that will take decades if not longer, unless all you eco-militants are happy with world and societal collapse, along with a general implosion of law and order etc... yeah, good luck idiots. There's no Harry Potter wave a magic wand and it's all fixed suddenly... unbelievably naive.

This "woke" nonsense is just far lefty oppressive mob group think that is trying to erradicate free speech/thought and replace it with a prescribed opinion that belongs to a nutjob minority... to hell with that, I shall continue being as unPC as I wish too. Although, when it comes to the pronoun rubbish, using "shim" here is appropriate.

Even the left wing Daily Show with John Stewart is making fun of this... go figure

Harris has a problem with her "word salads" that she delivers when in interviews... to the point where comedy channels like the Daily Show take the p*ss out of it.

Kind of funny with Harris, did she manage to deliver something that is understanderable, or just another one of the word salad speeches... haha.

Well, it's amateur hour from Labour and two-teir Kier... an awful performance in their first 100 days. Talk about a complete clusterF*** of a operation... hope all you morons that voted Liebour are happy as we are going down the rabbit hole of far leftiness, as it will be a disaster.

Well, it's the usual socialist nonsense regarding "We can get it right this time..." despite every historical case study being a complete failure, history and the present is littlered with examples of the folly of the far left.... UK will be in the toilet soon as business, job creators, the wealthy that pay 60% of the tax revenue etc. etc. will flee. Giving unions and public service workers ridiculous pay rises just to politically placate them is a way to disaster... Liebour haven't changed at all, but hey, screw the elderly and be a new nasty party. labour in it's courrent form won't last long as the politics of envy is clearly alive and well in their ranks. I could go on... but pfft! Venezuela here we come soon.

Can see Victor is still sporting that dodgy stash and commiting crimes against facual hair styling... man, should get six month in jail just for that.

Really, it's a case of six of one and half a dozen of the other with this one. Problem is, you have two historically oppressed people living next door to each other that hate one another. Hamas kicked off this latest cycle of violence to stop Israel and Saudi Arabia making a diplomatic deal at recognition etc. which Iran clearly didn't want. Iranians aren't Arabs, they're Persians and Shia, who have nothing but contempt for the Sunnis... hate each other almost (if not more) than they hate the infidel. Hamas etc. are clearly being used and at great cost to themselves, and few have come to their aid in the Muslim world. Actions have consequences, I'm afraid... what did you think Israel would do? Theocracy is a terrible form of national government. Israel, on the other hand, acts beligerently and often disproportionately in its defense, and its government always has to appease the ultra-orthodox parties to stay in power and is clearly paranoid (with good reason). Sadly, unless Israel presents a very tough MO, then it will be overwhelmed by it's neighbours and they will be exterminated with extreme prejudice, so has the right to defend itself like all other countries. There's also one other problem you have in the Middle East, and that is that all sides want the last word, hence once it starts, then it's a very difficult cycle to break unless it's some very complicated face-saving deal for both sides... remember when Clnton almost got the deal between Ehud Barrak and Yasser Arafat all that time ago, these two leaders couldn't even walk through the door first at the White House, as both thought it was a sign of weakness, and had to jointly walk through together... ridiculous! Palestine had its chance at the two state solution and Arafat ultimately walked away, Israel was ready to let it happen. Not an easy problem to sort out, as whenever religion and historic animosity are involved... intransigence and wrath emerges, instead of tolerance and mutual understanding.

Going completely cashless is really dumb, there should be many ways to pay for items and some are more appropriate than others for differing transactions. Aside from the obvious invasion of privacy regarding the banks/government knowing what you spend every baht on, right down to groceries, it's the surrendering of complete control to the financial institutions which will make them even more powerful than they are now... citizen credit scores etc. will be on the way like in China, spend too much on beer and your score goes down etc., very Orwellian. Secondly, and more importantly, you'll have to rely on an internet connection to buy anything at all... how dumb is that? What happens when the connection goes down and the useless ISP takes a day to get it back? What happens when the inevitable large solar storm hits and knocks out a few satellites (something like the Carrington Event, lucky it was only the telegraph operating back then). These lazy kiddie sheeple are walking blindly into a dystopian future which will strip away personal freedoms and privacy... but hey, as long as they can gaze into their phones and be distracted by mind-numbing TikTok shorts and Facepalm etc., no-one will notice or care.

Russia is a nation that brutalizes its people, to stay in control, and they in turn brutalize everyone they meet third party to oppress.... an awful an horrific society.

All of this sort of nonsense from these nutjobs is nothing other than mental illness... should be sectioned, the lot of them.