French youth are rioting about the wrong thing

Parisians are right to protest. But they're throwing rocks at the wrong thing.

In Paris they're rioting again about the price of bread -- against hardship in schools and the rising cost of living. Their target this time: the capitalists who (they say) are making the cost of living unbearable.

And yet, as French entrepreneur Brivael Le Pogam reminds us in this Guest Post, "capitalism is the force that drove down the price of almost everything it touched." And at the same time the state is the force "that blew up the price of almost everything it captured." So why are young people are out in the streets blaming the first for the crimes of the second -- vilifying billionaire producers while demanding more of the same from the state?

French writer Brivael Le Pogam (author of The Shifting Wall) points out the strange the disconnection, here and elsewhere, of young activists from the causes they protest...

French youth are rioting about the wrong thing

by Brivael Le Pogam

On my way to the office this morning, I passed a group of young people protesting, a Palestinian flag draped over their shoulders. 

And I asked myself a question I can't shake: why does this generation always fall into the same trap? No matter the history. No matter the context. Even the ones from wealthy families, who went to the best schools, who were dealt every good card. Always the same trap. 

I don't think it's stupidity. I think it's a mechanism. And a mechanism can be taken apart, piece by piece. 

A. The observation: everything the state touches becomes unaffordable. 

Look at economist Mark Perry's famous chart below, the one people call "the chart of the century." It tracks US prices since 2000. 

At the top, what explodes: hospital services, college tuition, textbooks, childcare, housing. Increases of +100%, +150%, up to +250%, far above general inflation. 

At the bottom, what collapses: TVs, software, phones, toys, clothing. A TV today costs a fraction of what it did in 2000, for an infinitely better product. 

And then look at what separates the two groups. It isn't technology. It isn't complexity. It's one variable, and one variable alone: how much the state is involved. 

At the top: sectors that are subsidised, regulated, shielded from competition; where the state funds demand and blocks supply. At the bottom: sectors where companies fight every single morning to serve you better and cheaper. 

B. The mechanism: why it's systematic. 

When the state subsidises demand without freeing supply, prices rise. Every time. Guaranteed student loans, and universities raise tuition. Housing aid [incl. accommodation supplements] plus blocked building consents, and rents and prices skyrocket. Administered healthcare, and bureaucracy eats the budget before it ever reaches the patient. 

In France it's even more vicious, because the price doesn't disappear: it hides. You never see the hospital bill, you pay it through payroll contributions. [In New Zealand you simply pay it through your taxes.] You never see the cost of school, you pay it through taxes. [In New Zealand you simply pay it through even more taxes.] Public spending at 57% of GDP, one of the heaviest tax burdens in the world, more than €3.4 trillion in debt. And the result? Overflowing Emergency Rooms, falling PISA scores, young people who can't afford to live in the city where they work. 

The market didn't fail in these sectors. It was never allowed in. 

C. Suffering demands a culprit. 

A 22-year-old lives all of this in their bones. They can't find a place to live. Their degree either buries them in debt or opens no doors. The future feels blocked. That suffering is real, and one can't deny it for a second. 

But human beings can't stand suffering without a culprit. They need a face. A scapegoat. 

And this is where everything is decided: who taught them how to read the world? 

D. Whoever tells the story picks the villain. 

Schools are public. Universities are public. Culture runs on grants. Film goes through funding committees. Public broadcasting shapes the narratives. The people handing down the interpretive framework are, overwhelmingly, paid by the very system that creates the problem. 

Do you really think that system is going to name itself as the culprit? No. It names the capitalist. The boss. The landlord. "The rich." The billionaire. The multinational. The commercial West. Same role, same casting, every time. 

E. One lens, a thousand causes. 

And this brings me back to that flag. A generation taught to read every situation through a single lens, oppressor on one side, rich, Western, capitalist, oppressed on the other, will apply that lens everywhere. To housing. To climate. To conflicts on the other side of the world. The cause changes, the lens stays. That's why the trap is always the same: it's not the cause that draws them in, it's the way of thinking that was installed in them. 

F. The perfect inversion. 

Here's the irony. Capitalism is the force that drove down the price of almost everything it touched. The state is the force that blew up the price of almost everything it captured. And yet young people blame the first for the crimes of the second. 

It's like blaming the firefighter for the fire because you saw him at the scene. 

G. The ballot box confirms it. In the US, a few weeks out from the midterms, a large share of urban young voters is getting ready to vote Democrat for more state, more spending, more regulation. New York elected a self-described socialist mayor, carried by young voters, on promises of rent freezes and city-run grocery stores. Rent freezes, the policy that has made housing scarcer everywhere it's been tried. The cure that worsens the disease.

Here in New Zealand, a large share are preparing to vote Greens; to demonise billionaires, soak the rich, and demand more regulation and rent control; and to load a $230 billion tax bill onto New Zealand taxpayers over the next parliamentary term.

In France, it's the same play in two acts. Part of the youth votes for the radical left, which promises more state. Another part votes for the centre, which promises to "manage" the state well, and has dug the debt deeper than ever. Two different ballots, one shared assumption: that the problem is the market, and the solution is the state. 

H. The way out. 

These young people aren't stupid. They're right to be angry. They're just aiming at the wrong target. 

The day they understand that their rent, their tuition and their hospital are expensive precisely because the state runs them, their anger will change direction. They'll stop protesting against those who create. They'll start protesting against those who capture. 

That day, the greatest intellectual scam of our time will be over.

* * * * 

Brivael Le Pogam is a French tech entrepreneur, founder of founder of French AI company Argil and the author of 'The Shifting Wall: Why the West Thought It Had Won in 1989 and How to Get Back to Work. He tweets here. This guest post has been lightly edited for a New Zealand audience.