The French Protests Were Inevitable || Peter Zeihan
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6teI4bG6lx8
Language: en | ASR: large-v3-turbo @ 0a363e9161cbc7ed1431c9597a8ceaf0c4f78fcf

[00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.220] Speaker 1: Hey y 'all, Peter Zein here coming to you from a foggy Colorado. A lot of you have written
[00:00:04.220 --> 00:00:09.780] Speaker 1: in asking what the hell is going on in France. We've got protests again, not just labor,
[00:00:09.900 --> 00:00:16.740] Speaker 1: this time also students. Why? Why, why, why, why, why? Okay, three things. First of all,
[00:00:16.960 --> 00:00:21.580] Speaker 1: France is going through a delayed moment that most of the rest of Europe and the bulk of
[00:00:21.580 --> 00:00:27.280] Speaker 1: the advanced world already has. Birth rates started dropping in the rich world back in the
[00:00:27.280 --> 00:00:32.060] Speaker 1: vicinity of World War II with globalization's onset. People finally had access to
[00:00:32.060 --> 00:00:36.580] Speaker 1: international markets, and so everyone could specialize. And they started taking services
[00:00:36.580 --> 00:00:39.980] Speaker 1: and industrial jobs, and those were all in the cities. And when you live on the farm, kids
[00:00:39.980 --> 00:00:43.240] Speaker 1: are free labor. You have a bunch. When you move into the city, kids are just an expense.
[00:00:43.240 --> 00:00:50.180] Speaker 1: You have fewer. And so we saw periods in the 80s, 90s, 2000s, and 2010s when various
[00:00:50.180 --> 00:00:55.920] Speaker 1: countries across the spectrum finally reached the point of demographic inversion, where the
[00:00:55.920 --> 00:01:00.600] Speaker 1: birth rate had been so low for so long, they were now starting to age out. And that
[00:01:00.600 --> 00:01:04.480] Speaker 1: generates a whole host of problems. But for purposes of this conversation, it's financial.
[00:01:04.920 --> 00:01:08.880] Speaker 1: Because when you've got a big generation, the last big generation to be born, that is in
[00:01:08.880 --> 00:01:13.580] Speaker 1: their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, then you're awash with money. And you can spend that on
[00:01:13.580 --> 00:01:17.860] Speaker 1: infrastructure or education or social services or whatever. But when they hit their 60s,
[00:01:17.980 --> 00:01:22.060] Speaker 1: all of a sudden that money goes away. They're no longer paying taxes. And they start taking
[00:01:22.060 --> 00:01:26.660] Speaker 1: from the system in terms of pensions and health care. And so everyone has made this
[00:01:26.660 --> 00:01:33.280] Speaker 1: transition ahead of France, because France was a more rural country, the land is just
[00:01:33.280 --> 00:01:39.380] Speaker 1: better, and so its transition from rural to urban happened slower. And they didn't finally
[00:01:39.380 --> 00:01:45.140] Speaker 1: have a birth rate crunch until just this decade. And so they're at the very early stages of
[00:01:45.140 --> 00:01:49.880] Speaker 1: that transition, and they have a very robust social security state, just like most of
[00:01:49.880 --> 00:01:54.180] Speaker 1: Europe. But this is the first time that they have actually had to deal with the fact that
[00:01:54.180 --> 00:01:59.620] Speaker 1: the money is no longer there. And that means they have to cut programs. And wherever they
[00:01:59.620 --> 00:02:04.060] Speaker 1: cut is going to cause a problem. Some of the biggest cuts have been in health, public
[00:02:04.060 --> 00:02:10.280] Speaker 1: safety, and education. And so it's the students that are rebelling now because they see the
[00:02:10.280 --> 00:02:13.880] Speaker 1: quality of the education and the facilities that they have just being less than their
[00:02:13.880 --> 00:02:19.400] Speaker 1: forefathers and they're right. Other countries have found ways to make do over time, but
[00:02:19.400 --> 00:02:24.280] Speaker 1: it's never easy and certainly isn't in France either. So that's one. Number two, France is
[00:02:24.280 --> 00:02:28.600] Speaker 1: a little bit different. France was the first country to really centralize and for most of
[00:02:28.600 --> 00:02:32.920] Speaker 1: its modern history, Paris has been large and in charge and has decided what's happened
[00:02:32.920 --> 00:02:39.340] Speaker 1: everywhere. And that means you have a lot more smoothness when it comes to policy. So it
[00:02:39.340 --> 00:02:43.600] Speaker 1: was really easy to put these social programs into place in the first place. When you're
[00:02:43.600 --> 00:02:46.540] Speaker 1: dealing with countries that are more federal, whether it's Germany or the United States,
[00:02:46.680 --> 00:02:51.960] Speaker 1: there's more debate, there's more conversations, and the richer regions tend to not want to
[00:02:51.960 --> 00:02:58.500] Speaker 1: subsidize the poorer regions as much. And so the subsequent social welfare state isn't as
[00:02:58.500 --> 00:03:02.220] Speaker 1: big, and it's easier to pare down. That doesn't happen in France, because France,
[00:03:02.300 --> 00:03:06.440] Speaker 1: everything is centrally designed. And so if you want to protest, you just go to Paris,
[00:03:06.480 --> 00:03:10.920] Speaker 1: because that's where all the power is. And so all the protests always tend to be louder.
[00:03:11.460 --> 00:03:17.020] Speaker 1: And then the third piece is the French imperial legacy was very different from, say, the
[00:03:17.020 --> 00:03:23.780] Speaker 1: Dutch or the British. Most European empires installed their own people in their colonies
[00:03:23.780 --> 00:03:30.520] Speaker 1: as a layer over existing political elites and economic elites. And they certainly
[00:03:30.520 --> 00:03:35.540] Speaker 1: took their cut, but it was a more corporatist empire where the colonials actually ran their
[00:03:35.540 --> 00:03:39.820] Speaker 1: own businesses, harnessing, of course, whatever happened to be in the colony. I don't mean
[00:03:39.820 --> 00:03:44.300] Speaker 1: to suggest that they were, like, nice about it. but it generated an economic activity that
[00:03:44.300 --> 00:03:50.420] Speaker 1: was left behind when they left and while they were there the colonials were involved in the
[00:03:50.420 --> 00:03:54.700] Speaker 1: economic activity it's not really how it went down with countries like say france or
[00:03:54.700 --> 00:03:59.920] Speaker 1: belgium or japan there to be perfectly blunt they they raped the locals sometimes literally
[00:03:59.920 --> 00:04:04.320] Speaker 1: and destroyed the local political elites and economic elites and just took over directly
[00:04:04.320 --> 00:04:10.440] Speaker 1: and it was more of an extractive empire so when they left there wasn't a lot of
[00:04:11.260 --> 00:04:15.100] Speaker 1: friendly memories left. And so if you look at countries like India, which, you know,
[00:04:15.220 --> 00:04:18.820] Speaker 1: screams about colonialism, they still have reasonably good relations with the rest of the
[00:04:18.820 --> 00:04:25.160] Speaker 1: Commonwealth. And the Commonwealth exists. And London is at least tucked to. In the former
[00:04:25.160 --> 00:04:28.980] Speaker 1: French colonies, there's not a lot of that. There's cooperation with the security elites.
[00:04:29.260 --> 00:04:34.700] Speaker 1: And that's about it. Well, what that meant was that the French were basically sticking a
[00:04:34.700 --> 00:04:37.480] Speaker 1: straw in all their colonies and pulling the resources home. And they spent those resources
[00:04:37.480 --> 00:04:41.580] Speaker 1: on a lot of things, including, say, the social welfare state. And when those colonies went
[00:04:41.580 --> 00:04:45.820] Speaker 1: away, the cost of the state got borne by the locals, so they now have some of the highest
[00:04:45.820 --> 00:04:50.780] Speaker 1: tax rates in the world. And there's just a lack of a certain amount of economic realism.
[00:04:51.120 --> 00:04:56.340] Speaker 1: There's this concept in France called public money, where the idea is that the government
[00:04:56.340 --> 00:04:59.720] Speaker 1: has the money, and it's a bottomless source, so of course we can demand the government to
[00:04:59.720 --> 00:05:05.860] Speaker 1: do whatever we want. In most countries, that's called taxpayer money, and there's a concept
[00:05:05.860 --> 00:05:10.300] Speaker 1: that we're actually paying for all of this, so we should probably have a conversation about
[00:05:10.300 --> 00:05:12.680] Speaker 1: how much of it we really want to pay for.
[00:05:14.140 --> 00:05:19.560] Speaker 1: I think the best historical example, going back to the 1968 protests in France, which were
[00:05:19.560 --> 00:05:25.840] Speaker 1: some of the biggest, was the slogan was, be realistic, demand
[00:05:25.840 --> 00:05:32.300] Speaker 1: everything. That's definitely what we're seeing now. It's not that the students are wrong
[00:05:32.300 --> 00:05:37.840] Speaker 1: about what they're saying. It's just that they're part of a system now that is almost
[00:05:37.840 --> 00:05:44.760] Speaker 1: custom designed to not cut spending. And now they're in a situation where they
[00:05:44.760 --> 00:05:50.300] Speaker 1: have to, and they just don't have a historical experience of doing that. And so here we
[00:05:50.300 --> 00:05:54.720] Speaker 1: are. Now you just watched a video on protest in France, which wasn't supposed to air on our
[00:05:54.720 --> 00:05:59.580] Speaker 1: free list until Friday, the 23rd of October. If you want to see videos like this that
[00:05:59.580 --> 00:06:03.720] Speaker 1: happen before the events, you need to sign up for our Patreon system. And we've got a great
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