| ▲ | alephnerd a day ago | |
> Guillotine for the super rich You know modern France has the exact same problem of billionaire lobbying and media consolidation that the US has right? Arnault (LVMH) [0], Trappier (Dassault) [1], Niel (Illiad) [2], Lagardère (Lagardère SA) [3], Bolloré (Bolloré Group) [4] and a couple others have an inordinate amount of control over French politics. It's also why whenever a country like China, the US, India, or others wants to hold the EU by the balls, they end up tariffing Congac, because Arnault's LVMH has a near monopoly on Congac production in France, so he almost always pressures Macron into acquiesing because otherwise he would threaten to back the RN. Both France and the US are similarly ranked flawed democracies [5] with similar dysfunctions. Also, immediately following the revolution, the guillotiners ended up doing it for the rich [6], as the French Revolution ended up leading to the re-establishment of authoritarian rule with le Directoire, Napoleon, Napoleon III, and others. The only thing you learn from the French Revolution is the same thing you learn from Tahrir Square - the house always wins, which in political science is modeled via Selectorate Theory [7] and Veto Players [8]. Sadly, it's the same reason why despite mass protest after mass protest, the Iranian regime hasn't fallen - the primary political and economic veto players in Iran (Army, IRGC, Basij, Police, Clergy, Business leadership, SoE leadership, Bonyad leadership) haven't defected because they have more to lose than gain if a revolution succeeded. The moment a handful of these interests think they can expand their presence under a new regime is when you would see Khamenei fall, but the leadership would end up being the same ba***rds anyhow, just like how the Islamic Republic ended up co-opting and rehabilitating army officers and business leadership from the Shah's regime during the Iran-Iraq War and after the cultural revolution. [0] - https://www.lemonde.fr/en/politics/article/2023/08/07/how-be... [1] - https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/frances-d... [2] - https://www.lemonde.fr/en/les-decodeurs/article/2022/07/10/u... [3] - https://www.reuters.com/article/world/macron-and-the-moguls-... [4] - https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/culture-et-idees/dossier/la... [5] - https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/democracy-index-eiu [6] - https://www.jstor.org/stable/650023 | ||