bad sneakers*

Here's a very very interesting article in that bastion of all things trendy and socialistic, the Guardian, on France's new President Sarkozy and what he might mean for la belle France.

France is different - it exists to remind us that there are different ways of doing things. It's not perfect, and its ways of doing things are deeply rooted in culture which means that even if laissez faire took hold (well at least a greater proportion of the citizens would understand what it meant) and managerialism triumphed, it wouldn't be the full Washington Consensus model. The same as if Australia were to adopt a more Francophone attitude to holidays and lunch.

However, the article expresses some doubt whether Sarkozy believes in as flat an earth as many cheering Hayekian commentators hope he does.

I thought the article glossed a bit over fairly extensive poverty and inequality in the US and UK. No doubt (he said, without bothering to research the stats) the unemployment rate in France is higher - I mean, look at us here with 3.75% or whatever it is. Yes, we've got the jobs and you need to have one to put the food (more on food in a minute) on the table, but many are part-time or casual or temporary. It's a job, but it's precarious and it's closer to existing than living, I would argue. Easy for me to say in my comfortable position, granted.

Yeah, food. After some decades of efficiency-driven food production: industrial agriculture, feedlots, reducing plant breed diversity, 'supply chain management', importing cheaper rather than buying better locally, supermarkets and lots of processing, we're only now waking up to the fact that the model may not be sustainable. Or good for our health and that of our children, more to the point. Slow food, buying locally, reducing the carbon cost of transporting food, eating fresher. It's got a bit to recommend it, eh?

And the humungous subsidies that have been paid to protect la vie in rural France, on the back of tariffs on our own oh-so-efficient agricultural exports? Yes, agreed, humungous. Yes, not at all economically sound in a single-bottom-line way of thinking. But in recent years I've heard some awfully similar rhetoric from rural Australia as economic change (and the drought, of course) buries deeper into the rural way of life. And not all of it from RM Williams clad National Party voters, either. You recognise that it is valuable, you want to protect it, someone gotta pay. Somehow. Transfer payments, cross-subsidisation, community service obligations and so on. Take your pick, but if the fast-becoming-mythical Australia is worth preserving, the free market will not deliver that unless there's something local that enough people will pay enough to see. By which I do not mean The Big Swaggie or whatever.

So let's watch M. Sarkozy: the rhetoric and the reality. No doubt the article makes a valid point when it says that France's current situation isn't sustainable. Babies, bathwater, agreed. Let's hope they get it right and stuff it up the nose of the flat-earthers. Let them eat McDonald's.

*Oh, Bad Sneakers? Look at the chorus: "I'm going in Seine".

La Boom Boom.