But Thailand’s population is no longer living in the 1980s. It is politically empowered, used to representative democracy, and much more educated. Despite the junta’s repression, Thai citizens are able to access relatively unfiltered news through social media. And the country’s economy is staggering, not growing at the high rates that Premocracy 1.0 delivered. As Thitinan notes, Prayuth and the other junta leaders do not seem interested in delegating authority over financial and economic policymaking, the way Prem did, to great success; partly as a result, there is little reason to believe Thailand’s economy can even recover to growth rates comparable to other regional peers today, let alone the turbocharged growth of Cold War-era Thailand.