Yellow Vests resurgence in France, Macron reeling

[Antonio the Sixth]

I'm starting to get the feeling Macron won't survive as President much longer...

He will, because the French Constitution is basically designed to make the President irremovable both formally and in terms of practical incentives, but he might be on his way to turning into a lame duck faster than even Flamby did (even after his defeat at the European elections he wasn't quite toast). Of course, he still has a chance to avoid this fate, but time is running out.

[Antonio the Sixth]

ITT: Lots of foreigners speaking very confidently about a country they've presumably never lived in.

[Antonio the Sixth]

ITT: Lots of foreigners speaking very confidently about a country they've presumably never lived in.

What else is atlas for?

Fair point.

[Antonio the Sixth]

There's also the broader issue of trying to find moralistic/pseudo-anthropological explanations for people's political behavior, something that's fallen out of flavor in serious political science since the turn of the 20th century but that's apparently still popular among lazy pundits and people who like to ape lazy pundits.

[Antonio the Sixth]

There's also the broader issue of trying to find moralistic/pseudo-anthropological explanations for people's political behavior, something that's fallen out of flavor in serious political science since the turn of the 20th century but that's apparently still popular among lazy pundits and people who like to ape lazy pundits.

You can speak in riddles all you want, but it will only play for a select audience (mind you, I'm not actually following this story).

I thought what I meant was obvious from context. At least, the people it was targeted at seem to have gotten my point all right (see above).

[Antonio the Sixth]

So your counterargument for why this isn't trite pablum by lazy pundits is to:
- Quote a bunch of articles by said lazy pundits.
- Bring up f**king google searches.

OK then, you've convinced me. This is top-notch political analysis.

[Antonio the Sixth]

...uh, yes, that's exactly how clichés work. Citing a bunch of pieces that all parrot the same talking points and add no substantive analytical content perfectly illustrates my point, so thank you very much for that.

And yeah, the vast majority of "opinion journalists" are worthless, lazy hacks whose whole job consists in peddling such clichés without an ounce of creativity or critical thinking. That's true for "left", "right" and "center" publications. I don't know what baffles you so much about this notion.

[Antonio the Sixth]

...uh, yes, that's exactly how clichés work. Citing a bunch of pieces that all parrot the same talking points and add no substantive analytical content perfectly illustrates my point, so thank you very much for that.

And yeah, the vast majority of "opinion journalists" are worthless, lazy hacks whose whole job consists in peddling such clichés without an ounce of creativity or critical thinking. That's true for "left", "right" and "center" publications. I don't know what baffles you so much about this notion.

Okay, well how about this.  All you've said in this thread is that people who are commenting here have no idea what's actually going on in France (more or less.)  So, how would you describe the situation?

I appreciate that's broad, so you can start from the point of how are the French people entitled to their entitlements if you like.

Every group of people of any country is entitled to their entitlements. This is basic economic psychology: once you give something to someone, they start taking it for granted and taking it away feels a lot more painful than never giving it in the first place. Just look at the US where ever the most fanatical small-government conservatives still think they deserve their Medicare/Social Security/Food Stamps, just not other people.

So what you're taking issue is not "entitlement mentality" per se, rather it's the way in which people manifest it in the political sphere - ie, the fact that France has a strong tradition of disruptive collective action (violent protests, strikes, blocking roads etc.). Now, the reasons for this are complex and I'm not entirely qualified to analyze them, although if you really want an answer I'd say part of them have to do with political history (the long spell of political instability from 1789 to the 1880s making certain forms of collective action ingrained in people's habits), social history (the development of a labor movement strictly separate from and even antagonistic to political parties), political institutions (which, since 1958 at least, tends to insulate political decision-makers from milder expressions of public disapproval), and geography (the primacy of Paris in every aspect of French life making it an easy focal point - although the Yellow Vest movement has actually subverted this trend by being overwhelmingly provincial). Someone like Charles Tilly might have a lot more to say about this, and since this isn't my main area of expertise I'll stop there.

Whatever its causes, I'd argue that the French's ability to organize collectively in defense of their interests (regardless of whether these interests are legitimate or not) is a good thing, since it implies an engaged citizenry that is ready and willing to take part in the political protests - in other words, the very opposite of lazy. Countries like Italy or even America (although things might be changing for the better in the T***p presidency) where people take everything the politicians do lying down, are too atomized to organize, and just tend to thing it's not worth it, have a far more serious problem than France IMO. But maybe that's just me who thinks active citizen involvement in political choices is a good thing.

[Antonio the Sixth]

No, we're clearly not arguing the same thing. You're conflating a sentiment (entitlement) with a form of its expression (protest) and I'm taking pains to disentangle them.

Now you're making some weird nonsequitur into macroeconomic generalities that has nothing to do with the point we were discussing, so I really don't know if you want this exchange to go anywhere.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Your complete misunderstanding of this

2.You argued that the French are right to protest to keep their entitlements. I'm arguing what Macron is facing and also pointing out a likely consequence of the entitlement: 10.4% unemployment.

proves this

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wrong.

I never said anything about whether people "are right" to protest or not. That's a misunderstanding one can only make if they conflate my explanation for why people have grievances (which I deliberately kept value-neutral) and my explanation for why they express it a certain way. I could forgive you for missing that distinction initially, but continuing to do so after it was explicitly pointed out to you implies a serious lack of comprehension skills or of good faith.

(Oh, and yes, they are in fact right to protest, and neoclassical economics is worthless trash. But I don't think this point is even worth arguing with someone as thickheaded as you.)

[Antonio the Sixth]

It's painfully obvious that the Yellow Vests' grievances are largely based on regional inequalities between the Parisians who control every aspect of French life and the comparatively immiserated inhabitants of the rest of the country, but both rational choice theorists and the woketariat see the idea of talking seriously about regional inequality as a threat so I'm not surprised it's not being discussed in this thread.

Yeah, the old divisions between town and country and between Paris and the provinces are a big part of this. But actually there's something else as well, and that's why it's even more serious than usual. Essentially, a large slice of the population lives in the strange twilight zone between the town and the country: the French jargon is periurban, and much as we should use banlieue rather than suburb to describe a certain sort of outer/middle metropolitan hellhole, which should use this term rather than the American 'exurb' or (especially not!) English expressions such as 'commuterland'. These big belts are a product of what might be thought of as longterm loopholes in French planning policy and surround all substantial French urban centres now. They are basically places where people to move to because the cost of housing is lower. The trouble is, communication and transport links back into the central city from the periurban areas is uniformly terrible. Public transport, in particular, is a joke. Which means that people in these places are extremely car dependent, even more so than people who live in the countryside proper. And are thus terribly sensitive to fuel prices: after all, the whole point of living Out There is because it is cheaper...

This is a very important point. Thank you (and Nathan) for trying to elevate the tenor of the conversation a little.

[Antonio the Sixth]

The outskirts of some European cities make me really glad about whoever came up with Green Belts over in this country.

Can you elaborate on that? I know very little about British urban planning, and if they got something right that the rest of Europe didn't that definitely deserves to be highlighted.

[Antonio the Sixth]

The outskirts of some European cities make me really glad about whoever came up with Green Belts over in this country.

Can you elaborate on that? I know very little about British urban planning, and if they got something right that the rest of Europe didn't that definitely deserves to be highlighted.

State control of land use and planning, incorporating very strict development controls around major conurbations (the 'Green Belt' policy). An explicitly Socialist policy of the Attlee government rooted in the Garden Cities movement of the early 20th century that has been retained through everything because the framework is very efficient and the scales are so heavily tilted in favour of Whitehall and ministerial power, that no government (no matter its other political stances) has ever been remotely tempted to give it up.

This does sound like a very good policy. I'm glad it survived so long through the post-Thatcher age.