Paris 2026… Cette "Manifestations du 24" est historique.

The ugly truth about France and some of the other European countries currently in turmoil - and which none of the politicians want to admit because it'd be political suicide - is that you can't solve the problem by going after immigrants (as the right asserts) or the rich (as the left asserts), but you could solve it by going after the old. One extraordinary statistic for you: people over 60 in France, a quarter of the population, own 60% of France's wealth, non-financial and financial (ofce.fr/pdf/revue/2025/3-192…). And here is another crazy statistic: that same quarter of the population, those above 60, receive nearly two-thirds of all social spending by the French government (previssima.fr/actualite/prot…) - which is famously among the highest in the world (France's government spending is an insane 57.3% of GDP). Last statistic: they make up about 40% of voters because they're a third of registered voters (insee.fr/fr/statistiques/266…), and they turn out far more than anyone else (franceinfo.fr/elections/sond…). Put our 3 statistics together and there's almost a bit of an apartheid situation here: the old own most of the country's wealth, collect most of the social spending and have the political power to keep it that way. Which makes them a de-facto rentier class, living off assets and transfers paid for by younger generations. And, of course, at the risk of stating a truism, the future is built by the young. Yet France keeps effectively taking money away from them to give it to those whose working lives are already behind them - and need the money far less since they already own the country's wealth. What about inheritance, I hear you ask? That's the funniest/saddest aspect: given that life expectancy has kept rising, the French now inherit a home at 54 on average. The most common case is someone in their 80s leaving it to heirs in their 50s, in effect the very old transferring wealth to the about-to-be old (insee.fr/fr/statistiques/fic…). You can add this to our earlier apartheid statement: on top of all the rest, even when the old finally let go of their wealth, it stays within their own "camp". That's my personal situation, incidentally: I'm 42, my father is 71 and he is starting to look at ways to pass things on to me and my siblings, when our professional lives are already well settled, so it'll arrive when it changes things the least, which is pretty much the French system in a nutshell. Now, I get that there'd be some unfairness in going after them: they paid into the system their entire working lives, playing by the rules of a social contract that told them if they paid up they'd collect at the end. Changing the rules now means breaking that promise, which is admittedly unfair. But there's no magic wealth tree in any society: you can only take it where it is. That's the way most major societal transformations end up happening. They're often triggered by a catastrophic event (the so-called "four horsemen": mass-mobilisation war, revolution, state collapse, plague) BUT what really drives change is a transfer: wealth gets pried from the privileged class who've been sitting on it and handed to those who'll build what comes next. So, in theory and in an ideal world, you can do without the catastrophic event and directly proceed with the transfer... The fact that in France, and elsewhere in Europe, it's the youth protesting is probably no coincidence - even though they don't frame it as a generational fight. And even though, cruel irony, the left politicians many of them march behind promise to bring the retirement age back to 60 (lcp.fr/actualites/legislativ…), which would make the situation even worse. Let's say they understand intuitively that the system is stacked against them, even if they haven't yet figured out how. And politicians are obviously doing what politicians do, meaning pandering to the people who actually vote, while pointing the young towards easier - and politically convenient - scapegoats. To be clear I'm not saying it's the only problem in France, VERY far from it. I'm also not saying that all old people in France live a lavish lifestyle at the expense of younger generations: there are also plenty of very poor retirees who, if anything, would deserve more. What I am saying is that it's probably the biggest elephant in the room: everyone can see it, nobody dares mention it - no politician, from any side, wants to run on cutting grandma's pension - and it makes every other problem harder to fix.

la réalité c’est que l'occident reste bloqué sur son logiciel des années 90 à voir la Chine comme un simple «atelier du monde » rempli de sous-traitants sans âme,incapables de comprendre la différence fondamentale d'ingénierie sociétale en Europe /US l'innovation est une machine extractive conçue pour maximiser la rente individuelle et privatiser le social alors que je dirais qu’en Chine le capitalisme est plutôt soumis à une architecture du genre confucéenne où l'infrastructure collective prime sur des délires individuels c’est un sujet que j’ai déjà évoqué à de nombreuses reprises pour ceux qui suivent mes threads depuis un moment mais là où la silicon valley crée du produit financier déguisé en tech pour siphonner la valeur publique avec une vision profondément court termiste, la Chine planifie sur des décennies en alignant l'innovation technologique sur la stabilité et la prospérité du corps social (ce qui n’empêche pas les fondateurs tech de créer des choses absolument incroyables bien au contraire) quand tu comprends que leur tech sert d'abord à bâtir de la résilience systémique plutôt qu'à alimenter la cupidité court-termiste d'investisseurs pressés(comme en Europe/US) , tu piges enfin pourquoi leur modèle civilisationnel est en train de plier le siècle et les siècles à venir

Eric Li argues that countries fail when they copy Western political models. It’s a controversial take. If voting can be manipulated by foreign entities, swayed by entertainment over policy, and if 'installed puppets' are the norm... Then, is the Western model working as intended?

End result: Ai regulated All networked actions scrutinized and must be approved by AI overseers Credentialism hangs on through social fear pressures from the left Near term benefit is in managing the obsolescence of human and economic shifts and creating friction enough to keep legacy institutions from collapsing. ——- I say this and i have zero doomer feels. Sam Altman warned us ‘some bad stuff will happen but we’ll work through it and it will be worth it

所以你的意思是，大家在吵架找论点论据的时候，你跳到桌子上把裤子脱了？

中国建立防火墙是值得的，如果没有这面墙，CIA和各种NGO会像制造大粪一样制造虚假信息以及他们的普世价值，然后倾倒在我们院子里，总有傻子会把这些大粪当成巧克力捡起来吃掉。

High schoolers, students: the twilight of macronism Hundreds of thousands of young people work hard to earn their high school diplomas, but there is nothing planned to welcome them into higher education thomaspiketty.wordpress.com/…

暴動で略奪にあった漫画書店Micromaniaの店主ピエールさん、暴動で略奪にあい、日本のネトウヨにアニオタ召喚のために利用されていたが、彼は「それでも学生たちを支持しつづける。壊し屋のせいで若者とたちが伝えようとしているメッセージが忘れられてはならない」とのことです。

Being 45 is such a strange experience. One minute, you want to make more money, get ridiculously fit, reinvent your entire life, and become the healthiest version of yourself. The next minute, you want to disappear into the mountains for three weeks, turn your phone off, avoid everyone, and remember what peace feels like. You want adventure, but you also want your own bed. You want to be productive, but you also want to cancel every plan you’ve made. You want to build wealth, travel the world, and accomplish big things, but you also consider 8:30 p.m. a perfectly reasonable bedtime. And honestly? A mug of hot chocolate, a cozy blanket, and absolutely nobody asking you for anything sounds like the ultimate luxury. Is this what getting older feels like, or have I just reached the age where peace and quiet are the real definition of success? 😂