Writter: Ghailan IRGH
The Locked Granary: Why Economic Exclusion Matters More Than Scapegoating
1. The Scapegoat Problem – Why Collective Blame Fails
Many articles and caricatures corner the narrative as if Muslim immigrants are the cause of the riots in Paris and other cities (countries). This is an oversimplified and deeply misleading accusation.
The recurrence of unrest across countries with very different demographic and political conditions challenges any attempt to explain all such events through a single religious or immigrant group. Collective blame is not a substitute for evidence.
In France itself, the unrest was not confined to Paris. During nationwide cost-of-living protests, authorities reported almost 2,400 arrests across France, with 855 arrests in Paris alone and nearly 1,000 officers injured. Arson and looting hit multiple cities: the historic 19th-century city hall in Limoges was set on fire and largely destroyed after its bell tower collapsed, city halls in Lille and Marseille were also damaged, and attacks were reported in Lyon, Bordeaux, Nice, Toulouse, Grenoble and Angers.
Consider:
- Lisbon, Portugal (2023-2024): Mass housing protests under the banner ‘Geração Sem Casa’ (Generation Without a House). The trigger is cost-of-living and housing crisis, driven by sharp rent increases. Portugal’s immigrant population includes people from a range of countries, including Brazil, Angola, Mozambique, and several South Asian and African countries. The demographic composition of immigrants differs across European countries, but this alone does not establish the causes of unrest – yet Lisbon’s unrest shows that housing precarity alone can generate protest even where the Muslim share is small.
- Brussels, Belgium (2022-2023): Youth unrest linked to unemployment, housing precarity and segregation in peripheral neighborhoods, affecting both immigrant and native Belgian youth.
- Tirana, Albania & Milan, Italy: Protests over corruption, cost of living and housing. Albania is majority Muslim but participants are natives, not immigrants. Italy is Catholic majority. The varied demography challenges a single-group explanation.
If every neighborhood in a village floods, you cannot blame one newcomer family in one alley. The drainage – the economic system – is clogged.
Q: “Why does it only happen in France, Portugal, Italy, Albania? If the Locked Granary exists everywhere with inequality, why only there?”
A: 2024-2025 is also not only France-Portugal-Italy-Albania. That is just what went viral.
Check the wider list:
UK 2024: Southport riots, driven by housing + cost-of-living
Germany 2024-2025: Farmers blockade Berlin, youth housing protests in Hamburg
Netherlands 2023-2024: “Woonprotest” housing protests in Amsterdam
Spain 2024: Barcelona anti-tourism and housing protests
Indonesia 2024-2025: Affordable housing demonstrationsFrance and Portugal just exploded first because the granary is most locked in their major cities: Paris price-to-income went from 10x in 2015 to 18x in 2024, Lisbon rents +70% in 5 years, triggering Geração Sem Casa (Generation Without a House).
The formula is NOT: Locked Granary = automatic riot.
The formula is: Locked Granary + Trigger + No Hope + Mass of Excluded Youth = Riot Risk.
The trigger differs: France was fuel prices + a 550k cost-of-living march, Portugal was a rent spike, Romania 1989 was electricity blackouts + no heating in winter.
Therefore, the Locked Granary Boy theory is an early warning system. Paris and Lisbon are the first dominoes to fall because housing is most unaffordable there. If the granary stays locked, the next cities will follow.
2. The Locked Granary: When Money Stops Flowing
In the ancient village, the Chief orders planting, fishing, and brick-making. Rice, meat and food are stored in the granary. The Chief ensures no one dies of starvation. Those who work hard get a bigger share.
My interpretation of a moral principle found in the Holy Books: wealth should circulate. Quran 9:34-35 warns against those who hoard gold and silver and do not spend it in the way of God. In many traditions, stagnant water becomes a rotten swamp. This is my economic interpretation, not a literal banking rule in scripture. Water must flow from mountain to beach. Money must flow as factories providing jobs and houses providing shelter.
[9:34] O believers! Indeed, many rabbis and monks consume people’s wealth wrongfully and hinder others from the Way of Allah. And there are those who hoard gold and silver and do not spend it in the Way of Allah. Announce to them the tidings of a painful punishment.
[9:35] On a Day when their treasure shall be heated up in the Fire of Hell, and their foreheads and their sides and their backs shall be branded with it, and they shall be told: “This is the treasure which you hoarded for yourselves. Taste, then, the punishment for what you have hoarded.”
When wealth and property ownership become highly concentrated while access to affordable housing and productive opportunities remains limited, the social contract comes under pressure. The problem is not wealth itself, but an economic system that fails to translate prosperity into broad-based opportunity. The Pareto principle reminds us that concentration can be severe – it can be 80/20, or in extreme cases even 1% controlling a very large share – which is why the granary feels locked for many young people. The point is not a fixed number, but the principle: when opportunity concentrates, frustration spreads.
In Paris, housing has become harder to access for many young people on ordinary salaries. INSEE and Notaires de France series show substantial price increases over the last decade while real income growth has been modest, pushing ownership out of reach. A young person spending a lifetime chasing money that cannot buy a house cannot realistically plan for family and children. A life without security or meaningful prospects can feel profoundly incomplete.
3. The Excluded Generation – Jungle Fowls Defined
I use the term JUNGLE FOWLS (Ayam Hutan) once to define it: it describes social alienation – a reflection of humans uprooted from house, family, and basic needs. When the granary function collapses, ordinary people can be forced into desperate survival strategies. After this definition, I will use the terms economically excluded youth or alienated young people.
A generation excluded from housing, stable employment, and the prospect of family life may lose faith in the social contract. Most will continue to live peacefully. Economic exclusion does not automatically create criminals. But when prolonged frustration combines with political alienation, perceived injustice, and a triggering event, the risk of unrest grows.
Economically excluded youth are vulnerable. They have less to lose than settled people who have a house and child and tend to avoid conflict. This is not about religion. This is about having a stake in society.
Jungle Fowls have fear too, but their frustration defeats their fear. They don’t care if their anger burns the Eiffel Tower or collapses the Tower of Pisa. When they are already angry, MAD MAX no longer cares.
We saw this in Indonesia 1998 and Romania 1989 – Never underestimate Jungle Fowls. When Tribal Chiefs no longer care about those who cannot afford a house, do not be surprised to see thousands of alienated youth.
4. Historical Lens: Indonesia 1998 and Romania 1989
Never underestimate what prolonged exclusion can do. I offer Indonesia and Romania not as proof that housing alone toppled regimes, but as a lens to examine how economic grievances can contribute to instability when combined with wider failures.
- Indonesia 1998: President Soeharto ruled 30 years (1968-1998). The immediate trigger for his fall was the Asian Financial Crisis, combined with political discontent, corruption, and institutional failure. Among the forces on the street were economically excluded youth. This offers a lens through which to examine social grievances: prolonged difficulty affording housing and marriage can contribute to social frustration, even if it was not the demonstrated driver of the 1998 crisis.
- Romania 1989: President Nicolae Ceaușescu ruled 24 years as leader (1965-1989), 15 years as President (1974-1989). Pattern: magnificent palace, but people’s granary empty, lights out, no warm houses. December 1989 – excluded youth joined wider protests. Ceaușescu and his wife Elena were executed December 25, 1989. The revolution was driven by economic hardship, political grievances, and institutional failure converging.
5. Romania Decree 770 – Separate Revolution From Crime Hypothesis
In Chapter 4 of Freakonomics (Levitt & Dubner, 2005), the authors ask: Where have all the criminals gone? They examine Romania.
In 1966, Ceaușescu issued Decree 770. Abortion banned. Contraception banned. Divorce made almost impossible. Birth rate doubled. But the granary was not ready. RICE, CORN, WHEAT was not there. No houses, no food, no love. Children became unwanted, thrown into state orphanages – the horror orphanages of Romania.
Freakonomics suggested unwanted children contributed to later crime. However, later research complicates this. Pop-Eleches et al. and subsequent work, including a 2021 study in the Journal of Public Economics – François, Magni-Berton & Weill, ‘Abortion and Crime: The Role of Cohort Size vs. Cohort Quality’, Journal of Public Economics, 2021 – found that cohort size drove crime numbers, with no statistically significant effect on crime rates per se. The documented consequences – institutional neglect and trauma – are real, but presenting it as proof that unwanted children inevitably become criminals overstates the evidence.
I present Decree 770 as a warning about state policy demanding births without providing a granary, not as deterministic proof that those children toppled the regime. The Romanian Revolution and the crime hypothesis are separate questions.
6. Policy Lesson – Unlock The Granary
The lesson of the ancient Tribal Chief: A wise Chief does not just order young men to reproduce or obey. He must first provide a house and a full granary. If he locks the granary for himself, he creates not guardians but alienated youth.
Indonesia 1998 and Romania 1989 illustrate how economic hardship, political grievances, and institutional failures can converge in moments of regime crisis. Neither can be explained by housing deprivation alone. The comparison is a warning that prolonged exclusion can intensify instability when combined with wider governance failures.
Blaming Muslim immigrants for Europe’s social unrest is an inadequate explanation. Immigration, religion, and cultural tensions may feature in particular incidents, but none should be treated as a universal explanation for unrest across different countries. Social stability requires more than law enforcement. It requires a credible path toward dignity, security, and opportunity.
Conclusion: Among those involved in unrest in Paris may be Muslim immigrants, just as participants may come from other backgrounds. Their religious identity alone does not explain the causes of unrest. Young Guns become alienated when they have no house, no family, no future. Provide food security, affordable housing, decent jobs, and a realistic path toward a secure future, and society gives more people a stake in protecting it. Lock the granary, and you will get thousands of alienated youth – in Paris, Lisbon, Brussels, Tirana, Milan.
A wise government does not merely demand obedience from the next generation. It builds a society in which young people can find decent work, afford a home, form families if they choose, and believe that their future matters. Unlock the granary. Expand opportunity. Give the next generation a stake in society – and a reason to defend it.
7. MIDAS CLOSED LOOP ECONOMY SYSTEM – A Pilot To Unlock The Granary
For 20 years, since I learned how Nazi Germany after WW1 was able to rebuild the country with the mechanism of Hjalmar Schacht’s Mefo Bills, I have been trying to construct a financial system that is more powerful than Mefo Bills, that is not anti-inflation and that can be used without foreign debt.
Inspired by Bitcoin, I created a digital currency that can only be used in a closed loop economy. I have compiled everything in:
The Midas Domesday Books : Closed Loop Economy System
The condition for this system is only one: RICE, CORN, WHEAT (BREAD) must be available, only then can this system run. There will be no more unemployment, no more young men without a house.
I am not saying this system will definitely succeed. To test it, we will implement it in a small area, maybe 1,000 households to 10,000 households as a pilot project.
References (added by META AI)
I have only read Freakonomics book.
- Levitt, S. D., & Dubner, S. J. (2005). Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything. William Morrow.
- Pop-Eleches, C. (2006). The Impact of an Abortion Ban on Socioeconomic Outcomes of Children: Evidence from Romania. Journal of Political Economy.
- François, A., Magni-Berton, R., & Weill, L. (2021). Abortion and Crime: The Role of Cohort Size vs. Cohort Quality. Journal of Public Economics. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2021.104548 (illustrative DOI, verify exact volume)
- INSEE & Notaires de France – Housing price series for Paris / Ile-de-France (consult latest Notaires-INSEE quarterly index)
- IMF – Portugal Housing Market Assessment (price rise 2015-2024)