Profiting from vice
Re: “Rich couple arrested for operating gambling, pornography websites” (BP, 16 Dec).
Pornography and gambling are two comparatively moderate vices which are commonly legal in other countries. Although these activities are not without some social problems and their morality is debatable, in Thailand their continued illegality, together with prostitution and recreational drug use, enables criminals to amass vast wealth and provides funds for an entire country of corrupt authorities and bureaucracy that also profit from the illegality of these activities.
We are told by those same authorities that these vices are kept illegal because of “Thainess” and the need to protect the Thai people from the harm these vices may cause them. It was further reported that the court denied the accused bail because “the offences they are accused of had a tremendous social impact”. And the often reported and endemic corrupt behaviour of the Thai authorities and bureaucracy does not have an even greater social impact?
Apparently, though, ill-gotten wealth is very consistent with “Thainess” and does no harm to Thais or to society. Quite obviously, those authorities who benefit have no intention of stemming the source of their illegal wealth. Why else would the authorities have done nothing meaningful for decades to stop this gravy train, despite the current prime minister’s promises to eradicate corruption which have amounted to nothing?
Rather than reduce the much greater harm the pursuit of wealth by illegal means causes to society overall — corrupting Thai society by widely promoting corruption as acceptable — these lucrative sources of illegal wealth are deliberately kept illegal by vested interests by voicing false concerns about the supposed detrimental effects legalisation or regulation will have on the “Thainess” of the Thai people who, it should be noted, have long engaged in these particular illegal vices without the same widespread social harm corruption is now causing.
Perhaps if the acceptance of corruption is included as part of the “Thainess” to be maintained, then I can see the point. Make or keep things illegal, and criminals and their supporters will always prosper. Surely that is the true intention.
SIBEYMAI