Friday, June 26, 2015

Ugly: France is Collapsing; Pelted with Eggs in a Paris Riot…

By Bill Bonner

We were down in the subway in Paris last night. At about midnight. At the École Militaire station. 

All of a sudden, we heard screaming. Girls. Shrieking more than screaming. Not in trouble. But not laughing either. 

It had been a long day with considerable excitement. The taxi drivers are on strike. They are trying to protect their turf from tech transport startup Uber. 

When we arrived at Montparnasse station in the morning, there was no taxi waiting. 


Out on the streets were men with egg cartons. When they saw a strikebreaker or an Uber car, they pelted it with eggs – or worse. 

One Uber car – reportedly carrying an American couple with a small child – was struck by a rock, its windshield shattered. Others were roughly handled by mobs of striking taxi drivers. 

“Over there!” one of the mob shouted as we left the station. 

A group of them headed off to do their mischief, as we dragged our bags down the hill to the Métro. The mob had formed into a demonstration, with red union banners and the familiar chants of Parisian demonstrators. 

They headed up the street toward the train station, perhaps 500 of them, accompanied by a few police cars. 

“There is something so old-fashioned about it,” said a neighbor. “It brings back memories of the 1960s, when the workers still had some bargaining power. Now, it just makes us nostalgic.” 

The ultimate effect of the strike, as with the last taxi strike when we were here, was to undermine the taxi drivers even more. We got an Uber to take us to the airport this morning. 

“France is dead,” said a young woman we know. 

We have heard this from so many people, we’re beginning to think it can’t be true. 

Maybe it is time to buy France, not sell it short. Maybe people are beginning to give up on the economic model of the last 30 years. 

We say this after noticing an article in a major magazine. In apparent desperation, the writers asked: “And if we gave free enterprise a try?” 

Almost everyone you talk to says France is in deep trouble. 

“It is impossible to work,” says a gardener we know. 

“I’m 62. I like working. I want to work. But the way the system operates, anything I earn now goes into the social security system. I don’t get a penny.” 

“Why not just work for cash?” we suggested, drawing on our experience as a scofflaw in Argentina. 

“It’s not allowed. I would pay a fine… about 5,000 euro. And the person who gives me the money would pay a fine of 35,000 euro. And could go to jail.” 

“How would anyone know?” 

“Are you kidding? This is France. A neighbor would denounce me. He’d see me happily working. He would say I was taking a job away from someone else.” 

Young people with education and ambition are leaving. London, by population, is the fourth largest French city in the world. 

One friend commented: 

It’s terrible. I need to put in a new septic tank. I was just going to get an old friend to put it in. But now they don’t have septic systems. They have ‘micro-water treatment stations.’

Of course, they look for all the world like old-fashioned septic systems. But they cost a lot more and you need to get engineers to draw up plans, and you have to have them approved, which means inspectors have to come out.

And you wait and wait for them, because, of course, they’re on vacation.

We could easily get the work done. But if a nosey neighbor or inspector sees us doing it, without all the paperwork, it will be a disaster.

We gave some advice: “Do it at night.” 

“In France, only half the population works,” concluded our friend. 

“The other half tries to stop them.” 

With so many people trying to keep anything from happening, it’s no wonder many things don’t get done. 

Rat control is, apparently, among them. Down in the subway station, near the screaming girls, trotted a big, gray rat. 

“It’s Francois Hollande,” shouted one of the girls. 

Everyone laughed.


Bill Bonner founded Agora, Inc in 1978. It has since grown into one of the largest independent newsletter publishing companies in the world. He has also written three New York Times bestselling books, Financial Reckoning Day, Empire of Debt and Mobs, Messiahs, and Markets
The above article originally appeared at www.billbonnersdiary.com.

4 comments:

  1. Replies
    1. It's already here. I'm into medical devices. The FDA is "harmonizing" with the EuroFascists. Plus we want to export to Europe. The compliance paperwork is Gynormous!
      Up until recently, I wrote all the software, and handled the compliance requirements myself.
      Now, I still write the software, but there are now SIX people doing the compliance, and they each make more than I do. Needless to say, a code change that took me a morning to design , code, and verify is still being processed by these 6 people full time for TWO MONTHS!
      My company is too small for this. We're out of business in a year.

      Delete
    2. Local Cabs Copy Uber's Better Mousetrap
      Spurred by the popularity of Uber’s mobile phone app-based taxi service, and complaints about the company’s maverick disregard for local taxi laws and practices, several local cab companies—three in Montauk, one in East Hampton, and one in Southampton—are launching their own cab-hailing phone apps this week.

      “Last summer, I saw how popular Uber was and how many regulations their drivers were breaking, and I decided that the local taxis needed to do something of their own,” Bryan DaParma, owner of Hometown Taxi in Southampton, said last week. “We started branding an app strictly for the Hamptons that will be open to everyone on the whole South Fork—any cab driver.”

      Mr. DaParma’s new app, Hamptons Taxi, was activated for both Apple OS and Android smartphones early this week, and he expects to have all of his company’s 85 taxis working through the service by the weekend.

      In the wake of uproar over Uber shutting down its app service in East Hampton Town because of new town licensing regulations that landed nearly two dozen of its drivers in a courtroom, some Montauk cab companies have banded together and launched a hailing app this week as well. Ditch Plains Taxi, Moko Taxi and The End Taxi all joined Gata Hub, a Canadian company that pairs mobile phone GPS technology with businesses’ internet sites, including taxi companies.
      And in East Hampton, Taxi One, a new app-based taxi and limousine service, also will be available this week through the Gata Hub app.

      http://www.27east.com/news/article.cfm/East-End/112810/Local-Cabs-Copy-Ubers-Better-Mousetrap

      uber 50 bil valuation as low bte and cabbies capitalize on alt app:)

      Delete
  2. Progressive Statism chokes everything.

    ReplyDelete