The French Riots

Pundits from the media, government and academic worlds have blamed the recent French unrest mainly on racial and ethnic tensions. As someone who lived in France during the early ’80’s and has returned several times since, I can attest that the native white French population's relationship with Middle Eastern and North African immigrants (and their children) has not been easy.

However, blaming the riots that began in Clichy-sous-Bois solely on a failure to integrate cultures misses a very important point: The heavy hand of government was also a major cause of the disturbances – much as it has been in similar outbursts in other nations, including the United States.

Indeed, the money successive Elysee Palace residents appropriated to appease the alienated may have been like gasoline: It works as a solvent, but it also needs nothing more than one timely strike from a match to damage or destroy whatever it touches.

Stephane Berthomet and Guillaume Bigot make such an argument in their forceful book Le Jour Ou France Tremblera (The Day France Will Shake). Well-meaning social engineers/bureaucrats wanted to ameliorate a generation or so of increasing poverty and lawlessness in the banlieues. So what did they do? They threw money – lots of it – at the exurban ghettos.

In a striking parallel with America's War on Poverty, funds the French government provided went mainly to social organizations in the concrete rings of poverty that surround many French cities. The result, according to Berthomet and Bigot, is that the chief beneficiaries of legislative largesse have been the outlaws themselves.

How is that? Well, in a reflection of their American counterparts, French organizations receiving the money were, as often as not, little more than financial conduits for what Jack Newfield used to call the "Poverty Pimps." They were ostensibly dedicated to improving the lot of the lives of neighborhood residents or members of their racial, ethnic or religious group. However, too many of them equated their power and importance with their abilities to raise more funds.

As Newfield might've said, Poverty Pimps in France, like their counterparts in the US and other countries, figured out how to work the system but never got around to making the system work. They very quickly learned that implementing programs to help the jobless get work doesn't bring in more funds. But television cameras do. And what's the quickest way to bring the evening news crews to Bed-Stuy or Bobigny? Agitate. Get people riled up and put cops and government officials on edge.

Berthomet and Bigot described – practically en toutes lettres – the aforementioned scene, and inevitable conclusion. When City Hall feels pressure, if it doesn't have money to pay off the agitators, it turns to state and national governments. Wanting at least the appearance of peace, the governments capitulate to such extortion.

What results from this cycle? Certainly not jobs, which are what the banlieues or inner-city ghettoes invariably need. And certainly not safety in the neighborhoods, for such a situation invariably solidifies the stranglehold of Poverty Pimps and their lieutenants (who are, often as not, connected to gangs, drug-distribution rings and other forms of organized criminality) in blighted communities. The latter, of course, is a disincentive to any would-be entrepreneur who may be thinking of setting up shop in the neighborhood.

So are the higher taxes that inevitably result from government spending. Someone who's thinking of starting his or her own business might be put off by the prospect of having a large part of the income confiscated; someone else with a novel yet highly marketable idea may look for a more business-friendly (and safer) environment. In the US, major companies have largely abandoned the inner-cities; their Gallic counterparts are doing the same to the banlieues. Furthermore, skilled and highly-educated young French people – particularly those in technology and finance – are forsaking their native country for places that are more conducive to their ambitions, and where taxes are lower.

Left behind are the chronically unemployed and the never employed – both of whom very quickly become, in effect, unemployable whether or not would-be employers discriminate against them. The Poverty Pimps tighten their hold on the neighborhood, particularly on the alienated youth. Governments respond – as Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin did last week – by offering more subsidies.

As everyone knows, handouts merely palliate symptoms; they don't work on the root-causes of the malaise. Only opportunities can do that, and the governments of the US, France – and any other country – should step aside and allow business people to create them.

November 28, 2005