With Facebook’s population having risen to over 1 billion as of October 4th, it has undoubtedly become one of the world’s most influential forms of social media in an incredibly short time.  I don’t think when Mark Zuckerberg first created it however he would have envisioned it to be able to have the effects it had in the recent capital tax protests in France, as outlined by Varun Banthia’s post, “France’s Pigeons”.

I think it’s a remarkable achievement to say that in this day and age we need not trek into the streets to protest, which can result in violence like we saw with the 2011 UK riots, showing you don’t need to flip a car to get your government to change.

I disagree with Varun in the sense that I think we all wish to believe if our policy makers are making decisions that the majority of the public does not want, we should have some ability to tell them so.  Hollande came into office saying he wanted to create jobs, yet this capital tax would have discouraged investment into entrepreneurship which would in turn create jobs.  I don’t see it as backtracking, more as being steered back down the right course.

Word Count: 200                            France’s Pigeons and Rolling Back a Tax Increase via Facebook