Comment by thelastgallon

Right now french people are obsessed with ecology and egalitarianism. Those who don't are not well seen in society, or left the country already.

So the best thing I'd see them excelling at in this century, if they can drive their ideology in the right direction, would be producing low-tech solutions solving 90% of problems with 20% of the costs, with open-source like tools / materials / methods everyone can replicate easily. A bit like this article about this old car.

I'm a big fan of the current range of French Renault electric cars.

The 5, 4, Megan and Scenic are just excellent.

I think the Scenic is probably the one I'd buy right now based on the range, 380 miles but the 5 and the 4 have so much character they're probably the first really iconic electric car designs IMHO.

French fries is not a french invention AFAIK but belgian!

> Guillotine for the super rich

Can we not glorify mass executions on HN please? Bluesky is available if that's your thing.

Concorde for businessmen

> 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

[7] - https://www.jstor.org/stable/4092374

[8] - https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt7rvv7

No. 5) is Belgian.

I believe both nation would be offended about the confusion of origins.

Americans simply thought they are in France in WWII when they ate it.

; )

The guillotine wasn't for the super rich, but for the privileged by birth. The equivalent would be to guillotine the nepo babies (and the Ivy League administrators who rubber stamp their admission).

Or fix inheritance. And by fix I mean tax as hell.

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