A French speaker argues that taxi protests and frequent strikes damage France's reputation abroad. He uses a story about a foreign celebrity attacked during taxi demonstrations and compares resistance to ride-hailing to rejecting email for postcards: change happens, and blocking roads hurts ordinary people.
Hello, my friends. Do you know what people are saying about you in England? Well, it shouldn't normally leave the island, but I'll tell you. Uh, they say that France is such a rotten country and that even African migrants don't want it. Right? People say, I didn't come from Somalia or from Eritre or from somewhere to stay in France, to stay in this country. Otherwise the whole trip would have been for nothing. And with the half wits who serve you, let's say, I was going to say government or manager or I don't know what name we should give them. Uh, it seems that this statement is becoming more and more true every day. So today I saw something that made me react. I saw a tweet from a certain short love. I'm not sure if it's a real name, but hey, despite everything, she's a person who enjoys a certain reputation in the United States. And she said that she felt safer in Baghdad than in Paris. Why? Because when she arrived at the airport, her vehicle was attacked and all that by people who were demonstrating about this Uber thing, this taxi thing, in fact. So what happens is that there are people who say, we don't give a damn. An American actress or a singer or others say things like that. We don't care. Yes, but despite everything, despite everything, what will happen is that France has its reputation on its side. Reputation, you know, is overrated. France is a bit like that student who at one time had an average of 18, and then years later, he struggles to reach the average, but still arrives with his old reputation. He still manages to hold on. He serves on his old reputation. So what happens? You are a bit in the state, you know, of the country as it is. We can make it look a bit like this chicken whose head has been cut off and is still running. How long will it run? So this kind of news, this kind of tweet, this kind of thing contributes to eroding your reputation. So when people who spend money, when they travel, who spend large sums of money, who buy things, who contribute to glamorizing your country, start going on vacation to Dubai and you attract Somalis who don't even want to stay with you, I think you have to worry. So regarding this taxi story, there are people who don't want to understand one thing. There are people who don't want to understand that the world is in a state of eternal change and eternal evolution. One thousand years ago, it was like this, and today it is like this. The only difference is that a long time ago, the world evolved Slowly, so that when it moved from one stage to another, the world didn't actually move from one stage to another, but rather went through one stage and then through another. Well, this change took years, generations, so that several generations lived through the transitional period between two apparent stages. So humans found consolation in this long change. Today, that's no longer the case. Today, change is faster, but change has always existed. So taxis. Taxis seem to be outdated today. The public has something else, and technology allows the public to obtain something else. Let me give you an example. Let me give you another example that will perhaps help us better understand this. Years ago, people sent postcards, people wrote letters. So there's always been a niche for letters. There are always people who find that letters have a personal dimension that email doesn't have and all that. Yes, but we're not going to. Letter professionals, postmen, for example, are not going to go and attack computer vendors and cut network cables to force people or to force the state to pass a law to ban email. Do you understand? It doesn't make sense. It's the same for phone booths. There were a lot of people who made their money by repairing or installing or maintaining phone booths. What are they going to do now? They're going to go to smartphone vendors, smash the windows and all that, and ban smartphones. I mean, that logic doesn't work. So the Soviets tried that. The Soviets, what they did, the state tried to do through monopoly systems, through systems of production or market control. What did they try to do? They tried to maintain products that no one wanted. There was no consumer for the product, but they continued to maintain it. The state bought it and then threw it in the trash. So what happens with this technique is that since the state's pocket is not infinite, what does this type of system do? It just tries to freeze the situation. In the past, it tries to block the status quo in order to create a status quo artificially. And what will happen is that sooner or later, because this constant evolution of the world is a kind of. It's like a river. And if you want to block it while you build a house on the riverbed, it will end up crushing it. The problem is that when the dam collapses, well, we end up with a country that is 20, 30, 40 years behind. And we see that perhaps at the time we should have allowed people to move forward, to evolve, to adapt to the new world, rather than wanting to maintain the old status. That's what's happening with taxis today. It's also happening with many, many jobs that are disappearing. I feel Sometimes. Sometimes I feel bad. Not for taxis. Honestly, I've never had much sympathy for taxis, I must say, because as a consumer, I've always had bad experiences with taxis. But sometimes I see heartbreaking scenes on television where you see a company that is going to close and you have people who say, so I've been producing here and now I'm on the job market, I'm about to turn 60. I've spent half my life doing this. So I feel bad for the person. As a human being, I feel bad for the person. You have to understand one thing. When you produce something, it's to sell it to the consumer. But if the consumer doesn't want it anymore because they don't need it anymore, what are you going to do? Are you going to put a gun under their head so that they buy it? Do you understand? What's happening is that you have to understand that no matter what your job, no matter what your professional activity, the world is changing and you have to adapt. You have to adapt constantly. If you've been doing the same thing for 40 years, think about it. If you're not in danger one day, you won't be able to do it anymore. That's all. There you go. What did I want to tell you? I think that when you have a state run by half wits, it's not right. If I had power in this country, I would have had the roads cleared with a bulldozer. Okay, I understand. I understand that people, and I'm a very democratic person, I understand that people can complain or want to complain, even complaints that aren't reasonable, I understand them and that people can express them, it's normal. But what I can't understand is that people can use violence, can take others hostage, disrupt other people's lives in order to assert something. And I think that's a completely twisted culture in France, this culture of blocking roads, taking hostages, going on strike, all that. It's a culture that completely overwhelms me. I mean, for example, if you take people who go on strike, they go on strike, what do they do? They block. They block. They block the trains, okay? They block the trains. And what happens is that there are people who are going to miss exams, who are. Who are going to miss births, who are going to miss vacations that they have been preparing for for 10 years. And that. And that the guy who is a civil servant doesn't care at all. Whereas, for example, he could go on strike and say, okay, today we're going on strike. We're not checking tickets anymore. Travel is free. There you go. Okay. There. They have a big impact. They're going to have a big impact on their management, but at the same time, they're not going to upset the public. Okay. Now, the expression must always involve making people suffer who have nothing to do with the story. There you go. I find that unfortunate because from a distance, it gives an image of your country that is deteriorating. Now, as I told you, your image is your capital. When you lose your image, well, that will be Somalia. Some places are Somalia. But anyway, I'll leave you with my friends and I'll come back another time. Ah.
