Informed Speculation

Of course, it’s more complicated than that, but if you want to get a handle on the events taking place on the outskirts of Paris, you have to understand the way French society, particularly its labor market, is set up. Theodore Dalrypmle provides a good primer here:

A Martian observing France dispassionately, without ideological preconceptions, would come to the conclusion that the French had accepted with equanimity a kind of social settlement in which all those with jobs would enjoy various legally sanctioned perks and protections, while those without jobs would remain unemployed forever, though they would be tossed enough state charity to keep body and cellphone together. And since there are many more employed people than unemployed people in France, this is a settlement that suits most people, who will vote for it forever. It is therefore politically unassailable, either by the left or the right, which explains the paralysis of the French state in the present impasse.

The only fly in the ointment (apart from the fact that the rest of the economies of the world won’t leave the French economy in peace) is that the portion of the population whom the interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, so tactlessly, but in the secret opinion of most Frenchmen so accurately, referred to as the “racaille” — scum — is not very happy with the settlement as it stands. It wants to be left alone to commit crimes uninterrupted by the police, as is its inalienable right.

Is it the end of the world, then, as the French know it? Of course not:

…[A]pocalypses have a habit of not happening. The present riots are only a temporary exacerbation of “normal” life in French lower-class and immigrant suburbs. (In all of Western society, not just France, social housing means antisocial behavior.) Even when there are no riots, such suburbs are strewn with the carcasses of burnt-out cars, like skeletons in a desert, and one can see the blackened remains of shops that have been put to the torch. Drug-trafficking goes on openly, and the hostility to outsiders is palpable.

The current interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, is the first French politician to suggest some approach to the problem other than building more community centers made of concrete and named after great French poets. As a result, he is both hated and feared, and the rioters must hope that if they burn enough cars and kindergartens he will be forced to resign and thus lose his chance of winning the presidency and letting the CRS loose. This will enable “les jeunes” to return to the life they know and understand, that of criminality without interference by the state.

The Paris stock exchange has every confidence that, in the end, Sarkozy or no Sarkozy, the French state will emerge victorious over the disorganized racaille, and everything can continue as before. The index has risen steadily — or calmly, to quote the officer of the CRS — throughout the disturbances.

Highly recommended…