France is Boned ... But How Boned？
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Summary
In this episode, we talk about just how cooked France is, and how this has led to the collapse of the country's government, and the impending collapse of its social security system. We also talk about how the French have the highest fertility rates in the developed countries, and why this is a problem.
Transcript
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hello simone today we are going to be talking about just how cooked france is just for some
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statistics that people might be surprised about is in france your average pensioner makes more
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money in terms of like cost of living adjusted money than your average worker in the country
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in france 57 sorry 57 percent of people are net beneficiaries of the government 43 percent pay
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into the government is already past the point and i said this is a point where democracies begin to
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break down where the average citizen is being paid by the government to exist and we're going to look
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at where this has led to downstream collapse just a second here also very fun what i love about diving
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into france and we've had episodes diving into the uk and diving into germany and now we're diving into
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france is each country is completely cooked in like its own way it's almost like europe got to be
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like the captain planet of evil and country vices and you know the uk is like i'll arrest people for
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memes you know like there was a guy who was arrested in scotland for literally painting islam can be
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questioned on his wall and then the police were like no it cannot the girl who who we're not gonna
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go into that you can you can go to our video where we point out that the only reason a country would
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ban the flying of its own flag is if it was under occupation there is no other reason to ban the
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flying of your own country's flag because presumably you do that in support of your government right
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if the government sees that as an attack on them and this usually happens under occupation like france
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under occupation you ban it so the uk has got its draconian speech laws and and and all of that
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then in germany you have like a secret police force of like brown shorts that literally label
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mainstream political parties as terrorist organizations and monitor and harass mainstream
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like people who are to the left of like the united states president or us for example as being uh
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political mind you this is a political party the afd that is run by a lesbian in an interracial
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relationship so yeah not exactly that extreme right then we get to france right and what is their
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nature of terribleness they're actually pretty good about not arresting people for stupid things
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and they're actually pretty good about not like spying on the quote-unquote far-right party which
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we'll go into like le pen's party or bullying them but they have the curse of the french which
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the problem with france is that it's full of french people and french people have completely unrealistic
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expectations around what to expect and they are treating like if you if you watch and what we'll go
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into a bit is this recent charade of you know france's current prime minister macron constantly trying
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to get the retirement age raised from 62 to 64 now 64 would be a very young retirement age globally
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speaking and yeah what let's see what it is it in the usa it is 67 for social security yeah so the
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point being is he wants to raise it a a moderate amount and we'll go into the data here but like
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anyone could tell you that the system's going to be insolvent in just like a decade and a half
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if they don't raise it and literally this is what keeps breaking the government and when i say break
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i mean literally they've been through like four sitting whatever's like head of the governments
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in like the past few years because they keep having to like step down ministers right yeah because france
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is a president and a prime minister and it's they're they're churning through prime ministers we'll get
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to it yeah and and the core reason is and the core reason that everything about macron's blew up even
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though he tried to side with the lefties is just over this retirement age thing and what makes this
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so funny to me is the system won't even exist in like a decade and a half if they don't make this
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change right and this change i feel like even if they do two years doesn't seem to increase its
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lifespan by one decade maybe if they do it immediately and so they're not even like arguing for like this
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being a permanent thing they are arguing for a thing they would hypothetically want if money grew
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on trees but like you go to the french people and you're like here is the data money doesn't grow on
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trees and they're like ah whatever so let's get into this so right now in in in france retirees per
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workers so we're not even talking about dependents right i talked about they were already past the
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dependency ratio with 57 of the population taking its money from the state not giving to the state
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yeah for 43 of french is already retirees gosh that's going to be 55 by 2070 and keep in mind
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their birth rate fell 20 in the past 10 years so yeah this is only going to get worse are there many
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developed countries that have that proportion of old people or is this is france is actually one of
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the best countries in europe for demographics they have one of the highest uh fertility rates
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in all fertility rates yeah but still proportion of old people i mean like i thought most countries
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hadn't gotten to that point of being most countries don't have most countries don't have a retirement age
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at 62. yeah that is really young okay so france actually has like if you're talking like fertility
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rates wise france is great but if you want to know why france is great despite being a catholic
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country because that's unusual for catholic countries is it actually secularized way earlier
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than other countries in europe and as we have pointed out collapsing fertility rates is largely
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about the urban monocultural belief system and the longer you have been exposed to that the more
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resistance you've been able to culturally and perhaps even genetically evolve to its lures
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and france has about a hundred years on most other european countries because they underwent their
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first fertility collapse about a hundred years before for example the uk did which is why france
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i would argue has such robust fertility numbers in its native population but it but it doesn't matter
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because they're completely unreasonable i i should note here by the way and people can ask you know
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if i'm speaking derisively about for people know like one of the jokes on the show is like i don't
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like really like french people very much like the country very much you know i make jokes on that and people
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are like why why do you feel this way have you been to france simone
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multiple times yes yeah yeah i've been there multiple times too and i have never been to anywhere
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on earth and i'm not even talking about by like a margin like nowhere comes close to being treated
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with as much rudeness and derision as i was treated for no reason and and people can be like well it's a
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cultural difference and i'm like fine then i don't like that culture right like and people in europe
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they talk about this like i know french people when they come to the u.s and they're like everyone is
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so nice and inauthentic and i'm like no that's not inauthentic you don't have to like like somebody to
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treat them with basic human dignity right like you you don't need to like if you're if you're doing
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your job and they're not like actively resisting you right it doesn't cost you anything to smile
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and try to make the day of like a random other person who you don't know anything about
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marginally better and did you did you have this experience in france as well or is this unique to
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me i can't say i interacted a lot with people because i generally avoid people whether i'm
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traveling or not yeah so i guess i don't really care and if they leave me alone i'm pretty happy about
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it yeah also it was a constant i mean this is not unique to france it also happened when i'm traveling
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in italy but the constant harassment of young women walking around is also really gets to me but again
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this is just where i'm culturally different right and and people can be like well you know different
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cultures be different right and and that's true around the world and i'm just like from my cultural
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perspective i think that you should you know give other people that you meet randomly the benefit of the
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and be nice to them and people will be like well that's just paris or whatever right and it's like
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okay great maybe it is just paris but like we go to manhattan all the time and people in manhattan
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are perfectly nice to strangers like and manhattan no well manhattan's known as being one of the less
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nice places in the united states and it's still fairly nice the only city i go to in the u.s
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where i like regularly see people be mean to people out of nowhere is san francisco but that's mostly
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because they're on like drugs or clearly mentally ill and that's more just like random attack
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homeless i'll call them the the attack homeless that san francisco has has cultivated and pushed
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into its its most dense tourist zones but anyway so to continue here deficits are already emerging
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post-2023 reform cor estimates 1.7 billion deficit by 2025 potentially rising to 6.6 billion by 2030
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even with the retirement age hike pension spending holds at around 13.7 of gdp until 2030 but could
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climb of gross lows september 2025 financial times reports based on luxembourg income study data
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highlighted that retirees ever 65 now have a higher standard of living and disposable income relative
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to working age adults however this isn't because raw pensions exceed full-time salary so let's talk
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over a bit how this works yeah i'm curious so they have a median standard of living when you when you
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cost adjust of 2310 euros a month per household versus for workers 2110 and and 10 so slightly higher
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2010 versus 2010 did you get those numbers right they're the same 2.3 000 versus 2.1 000 oh okay so
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basically a 200 euro difference yeah but the the reason for this is they have fewer fewer dependents
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they have lower taxes because people have lower taxes yeah but they often have supplementary income
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from like assets they've built up over their house like houses or whatever but still that's that's
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absolutely wild that is in in terms of like what france is paying on immigrants france actually has a
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significantly better immigrant situation than most of europe i think despite most people's perception
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i think it's maybe they just concentrate in paris because i see a ton of youtube videos on just
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yeah paris being completely different now than it was five or ten years ago well trump even said this
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right he got in trouble for saying it but he goes oh paris is like a dirt place to live now nobody wants to
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be there anymore and this is a situation we're having all around the world i'll note like
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manhattan for example is a garbage city today compared to 15 years ago it is not the same even
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five six years ago it's not the same and it's just empty and and boarded up and and you see this
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again it's not just france there's many places in in the uk you can go through where you know it is
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it's clear that you are not welcome there based on your ethnicity and it's it's a very uncomfortable
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thing especially if those those neighborhoods were important to you growing up or or you know you saw
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maybe were important to you at some point in your life but the funny thing is is like all of my best
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french friends because i actually have like a collection of like french friends i'm pretty tight
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with are immigrants i mean they are immigrants to france yeah they're they're african immigrants to
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france like when i go to france i stayed uh at at their house and this is you know all all black family
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all you know whiter black community and that's where i was hanging out and they were all way nicer
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to me than any of the french people i've met so so like this is my thing where i might have a bit
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more ambivalence than than other countries to to what is happening in in france right now but france
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actually doesn't have as bad of an immigrant situation as either in terms of how they influence
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policies as you see in the uk or in terms to just their sheer percentage of the population
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as you have in germany but their immigrant situation is bad in another way which is that
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immigrants in france are a net tax drain unlike a lot of other countries like in the united states
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the immigrants are generally argued to be a net tax benefit but in france so this is from
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le figaro nicholas parevo monte concludes that immigration represents a gdp loss in france of 3.4
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per year keep in mind they're only spending 13 like 0.4 on retirees wow so if if you if you
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what is it if immigrants had the same employment rate as natives the national wealth generated each
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year would be 3.4 higher and tax revenues would be 1.5 percentage points higher as well
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he says quote this loss in gross and this cost to the taxpayer contribute to high tax burdens on
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businesses which in turn hampers the entire economy in other words encouraging immigration to fill
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shortages in the few strain sectors amounts to sacrifice and gross in all of our sectors so
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france again even though it's got like the fertility rate problem it's very bad at setting up a system
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that selects for productive immigrant populations and if they could you know then immigrant and this
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is the thing like immigrants like it's not a like falling fertility rates and falling demographics is not
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a warm body problem it's a taxpayer problem if you are taking people into your country who are
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tax drains that's going to hurt your country yeah and again people they'd like to frame that as
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oh these pronatalists only want certain types of people to reproduce that is such a terrible
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misrepresentation when what we're talking about is the ability to maintain social services for
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society's most vulnerable people when you are bringing in non-net tax-paying immigrants or any
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citizen that is not a net taxpayer you are actively throwing the vulnerable people already in that
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country under the bus you're saying i don't care about them anymore let's accelerate their lives
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explodes who cares you know this is and i i will note my wider stance on immigration and i think it's
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something so so i have a few points here i think immigration in europe is very different than
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immigration in the united states the united states is dealing with a majority latin american immigrant
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population which is culturally not that dissimilar from the native population in fact every single
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one of the vices that people associate with the latin american immigrant wave that the united states
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is dealing with right now are vices that we complained about in equal amounts during past catholic
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majority immigrant waves when the irish came you had the irish mob you had all the the terrible crime
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waves and everything like that when the italians came you had the italian mafia you know this is this is
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just a catholic immigrant wave thing we have different episodes on why you see organized
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crime in catholic populations more it was specifically catholic immigrant populations more
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because it's not unique to catholic you also see it in eastern orthodox communities which you have the
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russian mob as well where you don't see them importing their their criminal organizations very
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effectively if they're from other cultural groups like for example like like the the japanese and chinese
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have big organized crime waves within their country but they didn't import them in the the degree to
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which like ms-16 or the mafia or the mob yeah i've not heard of being united states yeah so so the the
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the the wider point i was i was making here is that the united states can more easily adapt and
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integrate its integrate population i mean as we saw over 50 percent of hispanic males voted for trump
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right like they're adapting pretty quickly but and i think that we have less of a moral argument
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against immigration than other countries given that you know we all did come here at some point
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right to a country that was dissimilar from us cultural history like it is a nation of immigrants
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i do love though you kind of get the tone that i mean theming with france and their immigrants and
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apparently them bringing in net drains and the statue of liberty's slogan of like bring me you're tired
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you're like yeah masses in china i'm sorry france giving us that statue and being like
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send the trash over it's in the trash over here yeah yeah go to america guys but then they they keep
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bringing in their own right but it's a passive aggressive thing i don't know i think that they have less
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of a you know it's literally like their native land and country right like if a group wants to say
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i'm uncomfortable with letting unchecked immigration into my native lands that i think should be treated
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very differently and to me is it for the united states but yeah literally you have indigenous peoples
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in france the french are the indigenous people the indigenous people yeah and i'd point out in america
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like the waves of immigrants weren't awesome for the indigenous population yeah not not a lot we can do
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to reverse the situation right now but the the point i'm making is in and you could be like well
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you could give reparations and it's like actually that would only make things worse in the indigenous
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communities in the u.s where they do have really high amounts that come from like casinos and stuff
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like this and we'll do a separate episode on this you have like really high rates of like drug addiction
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and lack of education and poverty just in part because of this look at any of our episodes on ubi like
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giving out reparations seriously disadvantages the populations that receive the reparations
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intergenerationally that's a whole other thing uh the point being is is i will say that france does
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though and they'll say like well we take immigrants because they're from countries that we previously
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colonized often right like and maybe i understand like the logic there but to me it's not like that's
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they still have the right to say i want to sort of i don't know because doesn't isn't it the case that
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with the english colonialism the countries did really well french colonialism they didn't so france
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the french were garbage colonialists i know so they kind of owe them they kind of owe them if
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they screwed up their countries yeah like the british really don't have that much to be embarrassed
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about colonialism oh yeah they can be like no man like you're welcome we we made you better off
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the french the the yeah and and people can be like oh well what about these atrocities and it's
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like even if you account for the atrocities the england spent like half a century paying for a giant
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fleet just to stop other countries from doing slavery right like nobody had done that sort of
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international moral policing at that point that was like a completely new idea like let's take a
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portion of our national budget and just police everyone else's slaving routes right like britain
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really has nothing to be embarrassed about in regards to that stuff but anyway i should i should continue
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here so recent analysis including adaptations of fiscal space concepts indicate that without further
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reforms the system's funding from labor taxes could hit limits where sustainable taxation can't cover
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expenses we're talking here about the social security system pre-2023 baseline projection suggested
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exhaustion by 2030 so so their pension system in france exhausts in five years five years okay
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we've got five years which and that's so interesting to me because when for example it was proposed that
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retirement age would be raised forefront among the protesters were young people people who are like
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you got this wrong i really i looked this up yeah so the the yellow shirt riots were uh yellow vest riot
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were not about this issue specifically i'm referring to more recent protests the ones so the reason why that
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they've been able to get the protesters out there even the young ones who no way by the math are going
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to see these that's why i find it so strange is that the young people are being manipulated by the unions
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which have a lot of members who are pensioners so basically french has like they're kind of being lied
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to like they may not even be aware of the fact they're being explicitly lied to so i i was actually
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looking at this and they went through and they would like ask the protesters why they were protesting
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and it was things like well why should i have to work when the environment's burning and stuff like
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typical leftist slot it really they don't understand why they're protesting they just hate macron and
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they hate quote unquote business where macron isn't even like pro business he's pro like basic
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rationality and i don't even think he's a good guy he's not like my guy like i'm a le pen guy right
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like but lacron's things that he's fighting for are like basic things to keep the pension system
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working for 15 years rather than five years right like this is this is basic stuff right what are
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other things that he's fought for that are like really you know just absolute manners you people
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are arguing for like i want an infinite money tree well i'm sorry we don't have an infinite money tree
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well then i'm gonna burn down your car and city and murder people in the streets
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maybe don't do that right like anyway so at the at that stage we're talking the 2040 stage
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pension deficits could escalate significantly current pension deficits are modest 1.7 billion euros in 2025
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but they could rise by 2030 to 6.6 billion contributing to overall and keep in mind a debt that is
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always increasing is not a debt that is serviceable and will eventually be called on right and there
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really isn't much you can do about this the other thing that he wanted to do that everybody complained
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about where they go it's big business and really it's just practical is the insane tax like wealth
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taxes that they tried to do in france that would have basically kept people from investing and was
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this recent because the last time i remember reading about france and taxes was that france was just
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slurping up all of the wealthy british people when the uk raised texas reforms oh and everybody
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freaked out about that when really he was significantly helping the french people they were just too spoiled
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to see it um so by the way for the first time in 2024 deaths out outpaced bursts in france so they've
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already hit like the beginning of the plateau and now it's way down all they've been the kick kick kick
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kick kick going up the roller coaster before they hit back down so what are they gonna say here oh
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yeah i was gonna talk about the unemployment gap among immigrants in france non-eu foreigners face
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19.5 percent unemployment versus eight percent for natives in france oh yikes yeah poverty rates are 34
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percent in immigrant populations compared to 14 percent within the native population so is this due to some
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form of employment discrimination whereby it's really hard to get a job as an immigrant because
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that is the case in many countries i don't think so so i pointed this out a lot and this is like
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a mantra that everyone needs to like like globally we need to grok this and i love it came from my
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grandfather who's a congressman actually then i only read it because somebody read it back to me was a
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slur that he had used while while explaining it and i was like wow granddad i had never considered that
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thank you for this gift of knowledge from a different age but he said famously that you you
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cannot have generous social welfare systems and porous borders he said you have to choose one of
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the two because if you have generous wealth social welfare systems and porous borders like very very easy
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to cross borders you are going to just draw the people who want to live off of those systems into your
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country until like osmosis you you get equalization and you no longer have those systems functional
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anymore you know they've been completely milked to to saturation point that's why i use the osmosis
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so do people know what osmosis is should i explain what osmosis is you know it doesn't even matter
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anyway do you do you know do you need a i i know it's about equalization between cell membranes
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typically yeah with concentrations of materials yeah yeah so anyway so
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the point here being because if you do then you get equalization the the two ways around that is to
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have generous social welfare systems but then keep your borders very tight or you can but but france
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tried to have both and what that means is because france is more generous to its immigrants than other
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countries like the united states if i am an african right and i'm deciding do i want to go immigrate
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to the united states or do i want to go immigrate to france right i'm making the choice suppose i'm one
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of two people right in case one i have a harvard graduate degree or a stanford graduate degree i'm a
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well-known engineer i'm really like productive obviously like the choice wouldn't even be of
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you go to the u.s so you got nigerian guy super super smart you know could get a job at any company
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there is no way on earth he'd immigrate to france unless he just happened to speak like french and
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have a family connection there or something right but generally speaking outside of other factors he's
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going to go to the united states now suppose i am a refugee or i am you know somebody who you know is
00:25:38.280
is comfortable living off of state welfare systems which country do i go to oh my god no i would not
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look or touch the united states with a 10-foot pole i'd be especially with with trump and knowing the
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sentiment about immigrants now in the united states i i would just be like no the funny thing is is in the
00:25:55.700
united states there isn't particularly bad treatment of like high talent immigrants especially
00:26:01.080
in anywhere where they would immigrate to the united states is being sane in how they're handling this
00:26:07.580
so the reason why france deals with immigrants who are a drain on state resources is in part because
00:26:14.440
of their generous social services and i will note that the united states has broken this
00:26:18.940
where you saw many of these immigrant towns were getting like literally more money from the
00:26:28.740
government than recipients like native welfare recipients on like credit cards and getting
00:26:34.440
nice hotels and stuff like this this was happening in the uk as well and really messed up really messed
00:26:40.420
up because then that draws the types of immigrants that cause problems and it's often the immigrants in
00:26:44.020
these sorts of setups where you have the problems of you know the crime waves and the grapes and the
00:26:49.520
assaults and all of that you know and and i think that this is one of those things that the left can't
00:26:54.880
really deal with like there was a case recently where somebody living in one of those nice hotels and
00:26:58.420
getting money every week in the uk to some girl and people were like but he had a place to live and he had
00:27:05.280
all the money he needed and why did like we we the left acts i'm not the left acts like the reason why
00:27:12.600
immigrant population sometimes do bad things is simply because of bad economic conditions or lack
00:27:18.720
of material goods or something like that not because they have set up a system that would actively draw
00:27:24.300
in the type of grifters who's comfortable living that life when most people just aren't and in fact
00:27:29.560
you often see this even in countries that offer these things like i know this about asian immigrants i
00:27:34.120
know from who grew up in canada and they were like oh yeah my parents could have taken from those
00:27:40.100
government systems but they actively chose not to because they thought it was dishonorable
00:27:44.200
and like that's the type of immigrant you want right like where they're like well i could live
00:27:49.240
off the government i fit all the qualifications to but like i'm a guest here and i have to earn my
00:27:54.540
place in society and those are the types of people who are going to be really anti-immigration in the
00:27:57.880
next wave right there was a bunch of anti-immigrant away riots in australia recently and i noticed a bunch
00:28:03.720
of people rioting looked like visibly asian when i was like oh you see well you see this in the in the
00:28:09.080
united states as well a lot of the anti-immigrant protests have a lot of black and hispanic
00:28:13.440
participants um but what was it that macron put into place that caused everyone to turn against
00:28:20.460
him and led to this incredibly because he was like the king for a bit and then his coalition
00:28:25.280
completely sped up and then he had to cheat to beat the right oh so for people who don't know this
00:28:29.980
is why he had to end up cheating to beat the right so what he did is he teamed up with the the far
00:28:34.540
left groups and he's sort of a more centrist party and he's like we won't run against each other in
00:28:39.260
the districts where we're running against le pen's party just to ensure because she was going to get
00:28:43.380
the plurality and be able to control the government and likely right the ship we're going to talk a
00:28:47.280
bit about her party's politics in just a second if people tell you they're far right you can you
00:28:51.160
can judge whether you'd support them all right but what he tried to do was a retirement age increase
00:28:58.460
of 62 to 64 he and and people just freaked the f out basically and that really gets me right like
00:29:06.880
it really gets me that what he was attempting to do was keep a system solvent for more than five years
00:29:11.160
that they that they were they were rioting over an imaginary thing it it it reminds me of that monty
00:29:20.180
python scene where the guy wants to be a woman and the other guy is like sure fine i want to have
00:29:27.940
babies you want to have babies it's every man's right to have babies if he wants them but you
00:29:33.680
can't have babies don't you oppress me it is symbolic of our struggle against oppression symbolic
00:29:39.620
of his struggle against reality and i feel like that's what's happening in france they just want
00:29:43.740
to protest so when asked by the way they were wondering why they the the yellow s protesters like
00:29:49.120
young people were protesting they they said it symbolized deeper frustrations with macron's pro
00:29:54.760
business read that pro reality policies which they saw as favoring the wealthy while eroding social
00:30:00.640
protections issues like precarious job markets eg gig economy short-term contracts high use
00:30:07.120
unemployment around 17 to 20 percent for under 25 and education reforms fueled a sense of general
00:30:12.420
discontent okay and getting rid of the wealth tax that's going to make all of those things worse
00:30:17.620
sorry about adding the wealth tax uh uh him getting rid of it helped all of those things it
00:30:22.760
caused a flood of new taxpayers business starters everything like that and then if you other things
00:30:29.240
that they said they had a chant which was why work longer on a dying planet which is sort of
00:30:34.120
crazy right all right but i want to talk a bit about lepin's party yeah
00:30:38.900
so i'm sure you've heard that they're far right extremists right what what are their
00:30:46.560
far right and insane beliefs right they are against birthright citizenship that means that somebody
00:30:55.080
automatically becomes a citizen because they're born in a country in a country that has an indigenous
00:30:59.400
population like france that makes perfect sense to me in the united states i might question ending that
00:31:04.620
slightly more but in france i have no problem with with getting rid of that that's totally a rational
00:31:10.740
thing especially if there's people abusing the system to abuse your generosity as french people i mean
00:31:15.380
if immigrants are a net drain on your economy what that means is they are essentially like a guest
00:31:21.240
that you are giving money to rolling out the red carpet for and if they then treat your country with
00:31:28.340
anything other than the utmost respect and your heritage with anything other than the utmost respect
00:31:32.180
and and i and i doubt even many people in lepin's party would want to kick out immigrants that are
00:31:37.440
treating french culture with respect and we'll see this as well right like this is more to prevent
00:31:41.500
people from abusing the system who do not really care or like french customs and ways of life
00:31:45.760
ban dual citizenship and strip nationality from foreign criminals that sounds pretty reasonable to
00:31:51.760
me yeah national preference for jobs housing and welfare reserve social benefits e.g family
00:31:56.800
allowances are saying minimum incomes to be exclusively for french citizens non-french must work in france for
00:32:03.580
five years to receive them that seems why is that not already the law how is this for right party
00:32:09.420
yeah moratorium on immigration and deportations immediate halt to immigration end family reunification
00:32:17.920
regroupment familia no regulation for undocumented immigrants and deport illegal immigrants no deport
00:32:24.720
illegal immigrants asylum applications must be filed at embassies abroad not in france all of that is
00:32:30.320
perfectly reasonable restrict health care for foreigners again perfectly reasonable and de-islamization
00:32:36.840
measures specifically a ban on veils in public spaces which you know something that i ideologically
00:32:43.460
am like i i have more trouble with and that that impinges on people's cultural sovereignty
00:32:49.160
but the french people have a right to their own cultural sovereignty and there are many places in
00:32:56.380
muslim majority countries this is what i would say if these populations were the majority the
00:33:01.340
populations where people are wearing veils right now uh would you french people women be allowed to
00:33:05.980
go outside without veils on likely not in most countries where they're the majorities that's that's a
00:33:11.060
law or you you face it where it's not a law you face the risk of violence and and grape when when you do
00:33:16.660
go out without it so why is it unjust for them to ask that of these other people i think that that it's
00:33:23.800
their right as a sovereign country to demand that of people who are their guests you make a fair point
00:33:29.140
yeah i could i would i would feel differently if there was no other country that these women could
00:33:34.100
live in where that was the norm or allowed or in many cases legally mandated right so yeah i i i can't
00:33:43.680
understand why they they literally are like how dare you force this on these people and it's like
00:33:49.500
there are countries where people who think like them are the majority and we can look at the laws
00:33:53.940
in those countries uh the famous dune line that everyone likes to quote when i am weaker than you
00:33:59.100
i ask for freedom because that is according to your principles when i am stronger than you i take away
00:34:04.840
your freedom because that is according to my principles basically saying that the groups only say
00:34:10.000
oh i want this stuff right now because they can benefit from it right um exit key you framework so they
00:34:18.180
want to leave nato they want to leave the eu they're claiming that france is overpaid by seven
00:34:24.940
billion dollars annually they want to hold a public vote on leaving the eu i think that's
00:34:29.320
totally irrational the eu has been a complete disaster and it's going to be quite dangerous to
00:34:33.160
france in the near future because france for a long time was a net drain on the eu basically
00:34:37.300
germany paid into it france took out of it that was the way it mostly worked it was basically a form
00:34:41.600
of war reparations on germany but now that germany's population is crashing
00:34:45.180
out faster than france's is france has no reason to continue to play with this
00:34:50.180
basically scam system they set up to drain german coffers so that germany could play like it was
00:34:56.580
ruling europe which i guess they kind of were for a period yay they got what they wanted and imposed
00:35:02.620
their totalitarian mindset on everyone they want more protectionist trade and nationalization
00:35:07.220
of specifically they want nationalization of a lot of public utilities it's sort of like their
00:35:11.700
version of like the bbc npr that sort of stuff totally reasonable they want to detect fraud
00:35:15.880
ministry a lot of french people are going to be mad about that they want tax incentives for youth and
00:35:21.100
family to try to get the birth rate up not gonna make a difference but well i guess if it's income
00:35:26.700
tax incentives it really could actually that's the one thing we really support they want to stop giving
00:35:32.200
like family allowances and welfare to families that are committing crimes or in other ways delinquent and
00:35:38.300
doing bad things which again great they even want to enact the death penalty oh no i'm pro death
00:35:45.560
penalty if you do it cheaply in the u.s we do it too expensively that's the thing yeah i don't know if
00:35:50.440
they would be doing it financially sustainably i think most people when they initially set it up
00:35:55.580
would do it sustainably i think the only reason the u.s is so unsustainable about it is because we've
00:35:58.660
had it in for so long but they want to ban this is the only policy i really hate about theirs
00:36:02.680
is they want to ban assisted unaliving which i think is not smart it's so off theme for
00:36:12.040
well no it's like appeal to the traditional catholics okay keep in mind they also have
00:36:18.540
like ridiculous ivf policies in france where it's basically illegal yeah people know it's not illegal
00:36:23.420
you have to implant the embryos immediately that makes it functionally like really difficult to do at
00:36:29.420
above replacement rate which to me means that you know you're functionally sterilizing any family
00:36:34.200
that's having trouble basically just for some roll into of how how bad the situation in france is
00:36:41.660
right now france has been in a prolonged political crisis since president emmanuel recall
00:36:45.680
recron called snap legislative elections in 2024 following his centrist's alliances poor showing
00:36:51.240
in european parliamentary elections the elections resulted in a hung national assembly with no single
00:36:56.700
bloc securing the majority blah blah le pen's party would have won the plurality with about 33
00:37:02.940
so they cheated to to win i could go over the specifics of of what's been going on there but i
00:37:09.400
don't think it's particularly interested i think are is they're basically unable to form a functional
00:37:15.880
government right now one of the primary reasons why a coalition can't be formed it would be sufficient
00:37:21.000
to do so is that none of the politicians given the time left before the next scheduled election
00:37:27.480
want to put their reputations on the line and get involved with this dumpster fire when it would
00:37:32.740
probably preclude them from being able to win when they run next so they're like no i'm sitting this
00:37:37.820
one out totally not tying myself to this mess and two years away from your next big election not touching
00:37:45.000
this so basically no one's stepping up to the plate because they actually want to get reelected
00:37:49.160
and the system demands a certain amount of consensus in order to function and so you have
00:37:56.380
this deeply divided government that has no incentive to form or be functional which means really this is
00:38:02.300
just another example i mean we're recording this at the time of a government shutdown in the united
00:38:06.180
states what we're starting to see is an age of dysfunctional governments of governments unable to
00:38:12.880
even spend the the money they still have at this time and i think people are going to be
00:38:17.280
increasingly accustomed if not functionally at least memetically to the idea of their governments
00:38:23.060
not really working anymore and and and recontextualizing their private communities their own families and
00:38:29.100
also just private businesses as being the new sources of ultimate governing power yeah and i point out
00:38:35.660
here with france's ivf policy we wouldn't have any kids if we lived in france like we we like literally
00:38:40.960
would be sterilized by the state we'd have to go to other countries and that's what most people are doing
00:38:45.080
in europe well you know greece they're going to the netherlands they're going to mexico they're going
00:38:49.740
it's very hard it's very hard to do it's expensive it's especially you're doing it for a lot of kids
00:38:54.740
like we would be you know so you know and you got to go for the checkup appointments you got to go so
00:38:59.460
in france today like i'm just pointing out my larger theming here in france today we would be
00:39:06.300
sterilized by the state under sharia law we wouldn't all of my like best french friends are black muslims
00:39:13.460
so like and like literal african black muslims those are all my my best friends and friends
00:39:18.320
and so like my ambivalence towards france's situation right now is high because they've
00:39:25.240
always been nicer to me like the the the african muslim community in france has always been nicer
00:39:31.100
to me than the french community now this isn't by the way true of all muslim populations like
00:39:36.080
in the uk for example the muslim population there has always been ruder to me than the native british
00:39:40.840
population but they're getting muslims from different parts of the world i i don't know
00:39:44.900
what the wider like obviously i have disproportionately spent time in one muslim
00:39:48.640
community in france and i don't know if this is true for all the muslim communities in france and
00:39:51.740
for what it's worth i had good friends who were college students in france when i was in college
00:39:57.580
and visited france a ton and had a great experience so it's i don't know i also feel like part of this is
00:40:05.420
your texan heritage and there's something also that seems to be uniquely texan about not liking
00:40:11.340
france and mispronouncing everywhere everyone i knew grew up hated french people like it was like
00:40:16.180
a normal thing like you guys might not understand this if you're from texas but it was seen as like
00:40:20.820
a normal patriotic thing like it was part of being patriotic like yeah whereas my grandmother was a
00:40:26.840
french war bride um my mother was not a french war bride simone she called literally her biography is
00:40:33.620
called memoirs of a french war bride she really wanted to be french french because she thought
00:40:37.240
it was high class okay she was a effing jew from russia okay but she was not a french war bride
00:40:43.980
she tried to brand herself as such okay like quite literally but anyway she did because she was hiding
00:40:50.420
from nazis yeah but i mean i grew up with francophiles so i you know i i'm okay with it if you're french
00:40:58.820
and you watch this podcast please don't think we all hate no we haven't we've we've done so there's
00:41:02.500
this great community in france which i wish we had in the u.s which is like an investment group
00:41:07.900
oh that one yes yeah that specifically is trying to they're like a vc but they are like aligned with
00:41:14.840
like the le pen party and like trying to bring france's birth rates back up bring back heritage
00:41:20.780
in ways that they can also capitalize on french culture is extremely divided parisian culture
00:41:27.100
is extremely different from the culture in the french countryside for example yes i i always hear
00:41:32.200
that right um and so maybe if i spent more time in the french countryside i'd have a very and i haven't
00:41:36.760
been to the french country actually i think people in the french countryside also have like a similar
00:41:41.180
attitude toward parisians that you do they kind of hate them you're rid of them yeah so you know i'm
00:41:46.940
just saying well no it's it's one of those things where like there's just no reason to be rude to
00:41:52.340
somebody for no reason like unless you're a parisian i feel like the snobbiness is part of
00:42:01.340
the cultural cachet you know to be the mean popular fashionable girl that that coldness you know just
00:42:08.340
how the studies have found that waitresses that are more cold get higher tips yeah really i had no
00:42:15.980
idea that seems very unfair i know it'd be really for us like all the waitresses who participated in
00:42:20.940
these studies were like completely outraged like i bent over backwards to be accommodating a nice you
00:42:28.080
and you tip me less so yeah anyway you know you want the approval of the person who's like aloof and
00:42:35.620
i just don't understand the purpose of acting that way like it puts other people in a bad mood and then
00:42:40.920
they act bad towards other people and it's like a cycle that spins out of control i just don't i don't
00:42:46.700
understand it's their culture and like if they're leaning into it in parisian culture specifically
00:42:51.020
i i note that it's not that way in the countryside i've heard yeah yeah i mean i will also say like
00:42:57.840
in in german cities i've gotten much more like glares and and brusque responses in german cities like
00:43:04.160
checking out at the grocery line and stuff like fumbling with money and whatnot and i'm just being
00:43:09.160
like and germans are nice for that and i love germans you know just because people are germans are are
00:43:16.820
fine they're too authoritarian like their language is the cutest language how can you call a language
00:43:22.780
that has words like what was a fall well i i should point out by the way i have also dated both french
00:43:28.700
and german girls very seriously dated a german girl she was a hardcore communist she argued to me
00:43:34.960
that cuba was a better place to live than america and i was like why are people risking their lives
00:43:41.800
in little dinghies to try to get to america then nobody does that going in the other direction
00:43:45.800
you know yeah greta's risking her life in a little dinghy to try to get to gaza so you never know
00:43:52.460
that whole thing's over now like i'm wondering like for everyone on the flotilla they like look
00:43:57.300
around and they're like okay so this is no longer an efficient way to get aid to gaza no it's just a
00:44:01.260
party boat you know anyway i actually genuinely wonder if they did party afterwards or were they
00:44:08.000
too shocked by being trump to actually party the boats looked like group houses in silicon valley
00:44:13.480
like the interiors of them from the photos i saw i just feel like it's a bunch of young people hanging
00:44:17.320
out mostly going on an adventure like your dad did in his college days but yeah no and francis
00:44:24.360
man i mean just like considering the timelines of this you know that this this is going to become
00:44:29.980
an insulin program in five years we are very close to seeing the world teetering on
00:44:35.620
very profound instability and it's going to be interesting to see how it plays out especially
00:44:42.480
as ai rises so buckle up friends yeah buckle the f up oh by the way people are wondering they're like
00:44:50.160
malcolm why why have you dated people from all of these different countries my undergrad where i went for
00:44:55.540
four years to get my graduate degree was saint andrews in scotland which being in europe
00:44:59.720
and being one of the best schools in europe has a hugely diverse population in terms of like what
00:45:05.480
countries and what nationalities which is why i have so many friends from different countries
00:45:10.120
yeah uk schools are extremely international because they get demand from foreign students and they love
00:45:16.140
accepting them because they pay much much higher tuition so foreign students are able to supplement
00:45:21.140
the tuition of of the local ones and so it's a lot harder for local students to get in but there's a lot
00:45:26.200
of foreign students there yeah yeah anyway i absolutely love you simone and have a spectacular
00:45:31.860
day you too okay give me five minutes i have to change um the episode today how how what do people
00:45:39.120
think i haven't had a chance i was outlining trying to outline the episode that i was going to contribute
00:45:44.820
today so i plan to get to it when i'm with the kids oh that's fantastic no problem at all
00:45:50.520
anything new you learned today or any new information i told you though the fact i learned
00:45:55.780
today is immediately upon the the withdrawal of the israeli forces the idf hamas starts executing
00:46:01.860
civilians in the street just lining them up shooting them in the back i love it when people are like oh
00:46:05.640
the people of gaza like the people of gaza are being unceremoniously massacred people like oh no
00:46:10.680
what do we do buy hamas oh that's fine they were probably gay or something whatever oh my god do we
00:46:19.520
know they were yes so they they said they they were not like sufficiently pro hamas during the the war
00:46:27.640
or whatever basically anyone and this is the reason why i personally had a lot less negative thoughts
00:46:33.820
towards the the casualties that were happening there than i would in a normal war because hamas made a
00:46:39.620
pretty good showing of trying to kill anyone who wasn't pro hamas you know there weren't a lot of
00:46:44.740
people left who were not pro hamas well apparently they were enough yeah but well i we don't even know
00:46:52.260
if these people were anti-hamas i mean it could have just been a terror campaign or anything like that
00:46:56.680
you know this is a the way these things work i think the broader theme is that hamas was perfectly
00:47:05.040
willing to indiscriminately kill its own or use its own as human shields or well no the the wider
00:47:13.760
point being is that while the idf were occupying there you know in many ways it was a safer place
00:47:19.080
to be than it is today which is a shame but that's you know i think what everybody expected who wasn't
00:47:25.880
completely brainwashed and it's it's wild to me that we're not seeing the protesters mention this and as we
00:47:30.320
mentioned in the episode today just nobody cares like it's it the war is over and all of those
00:47:34.680
college people who literally like celebrated october 7th october 7th and they were cheering about this
00:47:41.540
and there was all of these these things they didn't cheer when the war ended and when they said that that
00:47:47.200
was their goal and i think for a lot of people and a lot of progressive in coming out here and saying
00:47:50.600
this they're like oh like it really was like about murdering people like it really was about killing
00:47:59.940
the jews it was not about what they told me it was about because they would be cheering right now
00:48:05.580
they would be holding celebrations on these college campuses they would be in all of the cities where
00:48:09.800
they marched the streets holding celebratory marches and they just aren't because they didn't care
00:48:15.160
and i think that there's been some videos of like some leftists like oh my god like so this was really
00:48:22.520
about anti-semitism i thought that was like a right-wing grift so this is a wake-up call for a
00:48:27.440
lot of people and and and for a lot of you if you saw people who were actively pushing this stuff and
00:48:33.260
whining about this stuff and they're not actively celebrating the end of the war i i would you know
00:48:38.900
seriously like if you thought that they were genuine in their beliefs like like reflect on that right like
00:48:43.440
reflect on what that says about what their actual goals were anyway pretty dark yeah pretty dark but
00:48:51.080
i i mean it's easy when you're fighting against evil like i i like our side on all of this because
00:48:56.080
it just feels like the other side is so nakedly evil makes things simpler
00:49:00.600
hey do you guys want to get me uh i can get you some bonkers
00:49:25.200
hey octavian do you want to say it like and subscribe
00:49:29.720
if you want to get subscribe we're going to give you um mania toys for if you don't have to say
00:49:39.360
if you're coming up a little bit then i need to look at those things