sickbuffalo Posted September 4, 2003 Report Share Posted September 4, 2003 Says jxxxl: Would you please share with us where you got this information. Bangkok Post. The polls were done when Purachai was still Interior Minister. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted September 4, 2003 Report Share Posted September 4, 2003 Average thai people approve of the crack down as it does not effect them, not directly anyways. Governments do set laws in the name of morality and social behaviour ie; abortions and porn are 2 examples. Businesses do not get to make their own laws as they go along. How many countries have to close certain businesses on Sunday and holidays. Supply and demand only provide for a business flourishing and does not dictate the laws that will govern, so in fact business owners and customers do not make the laws in any normal country, and of course Thailand not being normal a few baht can get you around such laws sometimes. Read the post in the legal section some new info on visas and tipping is acceptable. All is fair in love and war though!!!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
poskat Posted September 4, 2003 Report Share Posted September 4, 2003 Whether the crackdown is an attempt to divert money from the bars to the goverment, or to some organized crime, or to rehabilitate Thailand's international image aside, what's the practical result currently? Are there serious possiblities of Bars closing? And how could they control they resulting flood of girls just freelancing? It seems that would result in a lower pricing structure, which the bar system maintains at it's current level, for ME- the end-line consumer. After all, if all that changes is the aquisition process, is it really a big deal? I can see while experienced Mongers may be angered, but change is inevitiable in all things, and don't discount the law of unintended consequences. poskat Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted September 4, 2003 Report Share Posted September 4, 2003 Well said. I agree everything is different but the same. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted September 5, 2003 Report Share Posted September 5, 2003 Other places that I know of that have had major craxckdowns on the sex trade, where a result of the sex trade, and the customers/patrons going a 'little bit too far' which caused the local governments to enforce the laws already on the books. As an example, a BG giving a BBBJ at the end of the counter of an open street bar may have exceeded the limit of tolerance. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mentors Posted September 5, 2003 Report Share Posted September 5, 2003 samak: plenty of naked tits and butts last night in SC; is the crackdown over long before the APEC meeting? oh, good to hear! :: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bibblies Posted September 5, 2003 Report Share Posted September 5, 2003 Says sickbuffalo: Says Gadfly1: Strange, huh, that the more succesful societies reject the notion that a government elite knows what is best for people, and instead give the people the freedom to decide for themselves? We live in a wild world, and I wouldn't want it any other way. Elite? According to opinion polls around 80% of the Thai people support the Social Order Campaign. That may be but it's irrelevant to Gadfly's point. He's supporting the right of the individual to make his own choices and only his own, not the right of a government, or a mass of any others, to restrict any individual's choices based on a survey of particular moral likes and dislikes. If I wanted a career as a transvestite Michael Jackson impersonator entertaining a small group of customers who freely agreed to be entertained, then should I be prevented from this career by the whims of an opinion poll or an opportunistic government acting on it? To put it another way, if 80% of the population wanted all beer sold to be Heineken, would you make it so, cutting off the choice? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted September 5, 2003 Report Share Posted September 5, 2003 would this also include smoking pot and doing yaba. What about not serving booze on some of the holidays. You know in Germany some of the places you vote at are inside a pub. Stop in order a beir and put in your vote. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted September 6, 2003 Report Share Posted September 6, 2003 Bibblies got the point exactly right. Although I don?t find the examples you provide particularly difficult, the point I think you are trying to raise is this: where do we draw the line? Obviously individuals cannot be given the right to do anything they want. They shouldn?t, for example, have the ?right? to drive at high speeds through small European villages (you didn?t provide this example, but it was raised a few months ago by someone else when the issue of individual freedom was being discussed) or fire guns indiscriminately in a crowded shopping mall. And the clear response to those examples is this: ?of course not!? But we are not talking about driving through small European villages at high speeds or firing guns indiscriminately in crowded shopping malls. We are talking about consensual acts between consenting adults. And that is a distinction with a difference. When you drive through a small village at high speeds you are endangering people who almost certainly do not consent to your reckless behavior. Now let?s go back to some of your examples, say, smoking pot or, horror of horrors, serving booze on a holiday. Easy. Why not? If it is consensual behavior between adults that is not harming others, why should it be prohibited? And I can think of plenty of reasons why restrictions on consensual behavior are not only counterproductive, but also very dangerous. Organized crime in the U.S. owes a debt of gratitude to the dunderheads that foisted Prohibition on the U.S. in the 1920?s. When demon rum was outlawed, outlaws flourished. No one really disputes that today. But if you have been reading The Nation for the last few days (even just the headlines), you?ll know that the Khun Sant, the national head of the Thai police, intends to end all commercial sex in Thailand. I am not saying that it will even come close to happening, but that is the official line on the scope of the crackdown. If you don?t believe me, take a look for yourself ? you?ll find the articles on the front page. Now of course there is no organized crime to take advantage of a prohibition on commercial sex in Thailand, is there? And the police are totally clean, right? So the chance of this New Social Order backfiring and fueling more corruption is virtually nil, right? Well unless you agree with the first two sentences of this paragraph, there is plenty to worry about. Prohibition was a major disaster in the U.S. ? and we think Thailand will do better? Here is a short test. Which is the bigger problem: (a) a few naked women dancing on a stage or ( corruption so pervasive and at such a high level that it places Thailand in the top third of corrupt countries and is demonstrably responsible for stifling economic growth? There are other problems with prohibitions on consensual behavior. The biggest threats to individual liberty and the most invasive police tactics are employed when trying to repress consensual behavior. Think about it for a second; if all the participants in the ?crime? are willing, there is no victim to make a report. Thus, the police need to resort to entrapment or such pleasant measures as or forcing bar patrons to suffer the indignity of having to piss into bottle before they can go home. (I am sure that leaves a wonderful memory with tourists that happen to visit the wrong bar at the wrong time.) I have never seen these sorts of abusive measures employed when, say, a robbery is being investigated, but when the ?crime? is consensual, the incentive for the police to trample on individual rights is strong. And so is the potential for graft. One final problem with prohibitions on commonplace consensual behavior (I could easily raise more). They provide an excellent means for targeting business and political rivals. If everyone is doing it (and in Thailand, that is pretty damn close to being true), then everyone is a criminal, which means that those in position of power can pick and choose their victims. Why are the police raiding Khun Chuwit's parlours now? Why has Q Bar been targeted? If you test enough patrons in just about any trendy, popular bar in Thailand (or anywhere else in the World for that matter), you?ll find a few people with something fishy in their urine. And that allows the police to punish the owner? How is that fair? Unless Germany of the 1930's is your model, how is that a sign of a country developing in the right direction? And to end on a positive note to what is an ugly and counterproductive campaign, it seems that at least the Law Society of Thailand understands the problems here. I was heartened to read in The Nation that there will be challenges. Whether this will amount to anything?well I am not holding my breath, but I am hoping that perhaps I will be pleasantly surprised. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chilli13 Posted September 6, 2003 Report Share Posted September 6, 2003 scary & sad indeed the way LOS may be heading... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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