It's a typical views an outsider of French society from exterior. You have to observe and live with French people long enough to understand French culture and mentality. At the first degree, some people may think that French people are some kind of foul foul, revolting, childish and anarchist people. But in reality French people (at least majority of them) are ego, possessive and psycho rigid people, attaching to their freedom and rights at all causes. They are capable to think by their own, to decide, to unite to defend their causes while it's needed. They took much but give little and yet only while it is happen of their ego and not in the sense of generosity or humanism. French are also lazy and jealous people. They look down on you yet capable to lend you some kind of helps just to nourish their ego and to feel superior to you while you are inferior to them, intellectual or materiel but while you are equal or superior to them in both material and intellectual they hate you and jealous of you at one till to lead action against you. It is difficult to be hypocrite and behave as nothing happen while you can read these horror in these people mind.
French people are also very ego, racist and nationalist people on earth. Equality, fraternity and diversity existed only on paper but not in practice. Racist begin in a small society to big one. A foreigner who married to A French, even a low class French comparing to them, may submit racism and discrimination by their French conjoint. They have to do much to stay with these people or have to divorce. Even two sick people (one French and one foreigner) merit different treatment from French administration. No need to talk about jobs or other social treatment. There is merely unite color, the white French in some kind of French institutions like education, policy and administration or other high ranging/leading position. Rare are other people other than French who can excess to these institutions, they are just symbolic. All dirty jobs rejecting by low class French are done by foreigners and yet... Even a French who had no education merit better treatment and got better low class jobs than a foreigners with a high degree. A horror In the eye of people victims of charle Degaule crimes, degaule is only a war criminal but for French people, it is their respectful highest national hero. No matter that many french intellectuals supported yuons or yuon crimes in Cambodia. Where goes the world of valor? With this kind of horror and hypocrisy, do these people can claim they still have some valor to defend? But above all, it is French racist and hypocrisy that really a horror and really revolting..! ----- Original Message ----- From: [email protected] To: [email protected] Sent: Monday, November 01, 2010 5:29 AM Subject: Why the French Love Social Conflict October 31, 2010 Why the French Love Social Conflict By Theo Vermaelen France is in many ways a unique country. Where else in the world could you see a 15-year-old appear on TV saying that he is striking because he would like to retire at 60 instead of 62? Where else could you see a leading politician such as Segolene Royal encouraging 15-year-olds to go on strike? In any other country Ms. Royal would be part of the Loony Left, but here she got 47 % of the votes in the recent presidential election and is considered a mainstream socialist candidate for replacing Sarkozy in 2012. Where else would 71 % of the people support strikers who block refineries so that they have to wait hours in line to fill up their cars? <!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--> <!--[endif]--> Even supposedly right-wing politicians such as Dominique de Villepin, ex-prime minister under Chirac, have endorsed the 15-year-olds' position, claiming that if people retire later, the younger will have to wait longer for a job. This statement is probably the most pure form of static economic thinking ever pronounced -- i.e., the idea that the labor market consists of a fixed number of slots. If this were the case, we could simply eliminate youth unemployment by lowering the retirement age to 45. After 9/11, many of us tried to understand why so many Saudis supported Islamic terrorism, and the answer was often found in school textbooks that openly preached hatred against the nonbelievers. A similar exercise should be done to better understand the French mind. What do the French learn in school to make them support economic terrorism and chaos as long as it is organized by the working class? Except for students in a special economics section, French high school students get no education in economics or finance. So one explanation for the French attitude is the fact that the vast majority of the people have no basic understanding of economics or markets. Those who get economics training in high school probably get a muddled message. I got this impression after taking a closer look at the content of the economics courses of the last year of the "lycée," or high school. The topics discussed seem more appropriate for a sociology course. Out of the seven courses of the curriculum, four have titles such as "Social Stratification and Inequality," "Conflict and Social Mobilization," "Integration and Solidarity," and "European Integration and Economic and Social Policies." There is no discussion of microeconomics (demand and supply) or firm optimizing behavior such as profit (or value) maximization or discussion of financial markets or free markets in general. The seeds of anti-capitalism and anti-Americanism can be found throughout the curriculum. One chapter deals with "Conflict and Social Mobilization." After a thorough analysis of Marxist thinking and an almost sad note that the influence of workers has diminished (because they are fewer workers, and the ones that became wealthier lost their class-identification), the authors still conclude that <!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--> <!--[endif]--> [t]he reasons for the conflict with the other social classes remain strong. Although workers participate in mass consumption they use fewer services than other classes: they go less on holidays than others, they have less access to the internet and they don't have maids or nannies. In short, French people are still taught today that class warfare is the nature of (French) society and will remain as long as not all classes are equal. Of course, equality is not possible, as it would require that either all maids have maids or that there would be no maids. The chapter on "Work and Employment" explains unemployment only as a result of technological progress where machines replace workers. Nowhere can a discussion be found on how social charges, taxes, and labor regulations (such as the minimum wage) can contribute to unemployment. The icing on the cake is the statement in the section on "Conflict and Social Mobilization", which is supposed to be a consolation for all of us waiting in the gas lines: <!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--> <!--[endif]--> A priori we often tend to think that conflicts are useless, they are better avoided. Not at all what sociologists think: conflict makes change possible. Social conflicts, because they put individuals into action, also contribute to form identities and develop solidarity. The first difficulty for you in this chapter is therefore the need to consider conflict in a positive role. Luckily, the French government has more or less responded as the Saudi government did after 9/11: starting this year, all high school students (not just the ones of the economics section) will have to take a course in economics, and the curriculum will be changed. The goal of the curriculum will be to better understand how companies, households, and the state behave and how markets allocate resources, including labor markets and financial markets. So there is some serious hope that in the future, corporations will no longer be depicted as entities to fight, but instead as the ultimate creators of wealth. Predictably, when the reforms were proposed at the beginning of this year, Francois Dubet, the only sociologist on the curriculum committee, resigned in protest, stating that "[n]ow the corporation will no longer be seen as a place where people work, or like a social entity, but as a unit of production that has to continuously adapt to a changing environment." Let's hope Mr. Dubet is right. And perhaps then the French will someday understand that when the supply of oil is cut by striking workers, the price of gasoline at the pump will rise. Theo Vermaelen is Professor of Finance, INSEAD. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Cambodia Discussion (CAMDISC) - www.cambodia.org" group. This is an unmoderated forum. Please refrain from using foul language. Thank you for your understanding. Peace among us and in Cambodia. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/camdisc Learn more - http://www.cambodia.org -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Cambodia Discussion (CAMDISC) - www.cambodia.org" group. This is an unmoderated forum. Please refrain from using foul language. Thank you for your understanding. Peace among us and in Cambodia. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/camdisc Learn more - http://www.cambodia.org
