The "Yellow Vest" riots parallel the French Revolution and it's failures. Like their forefathers, the revolutionaries in France are not asking for self governance, independence, freedom, and for government to mind it's own limited business: instead, the revolutionaries donning yellow vests demand a new and benevolent king to rule them. They have not asked for a literal king, but instead have asked for more subsidies, more benefits from government that can be claimed by much more of the population, and have asked government to more closely manage and regulate how businesses are run. Meanwhile, the rioters also demanded a reduction of taxes, primarily for gas, but across the board entirely. The tax increases are the result of the very expansion of government they continue to demand. One cannot expect an entity with no legal competition to do more with less. They want a bigger more powerful government to control more aspects of their life, despite that more government is exactly what has failed them. Benevolent or not a king is always a king: a government of large scope is always the same.

Cut the heads off tyrants, replace them with more leaders who are to have an even tighter grip on your lives, repeat. That was the failure of the French Revolution, and that will be the failure of the Yellow Vests. Demanding a change of guards is demanding no change at all.

They should look to the authors of the American Revolution: look to The Declaration of Independence (and it's earlier drafts), look to the Federalist Papers, look to the Anti-federalist papers, look to the Articles of Confederation, look to the United States Constitution, look to Thomas Paine's "Common Sense," and to their own Frédéric Bastiat's "The Law."

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The roadmap to success, to mitigating poverty, to more freedom is a well documented one, though much forgotten. Free people, who govern themselves are the key to a successful people. People are highly flawed, so any system of government who puts power into the hands of the few guarantees corruption; whereas freedom guarantees that people at least have dominion over their own person and property. If government is the problem, a more powerful government will worsen the problem. If a few large businesses are the problem, making a single entity for that purpose under government creates a monopolized problem, with no legal competition. Will people still be flawed? Yes. Will there still be corruption? Yes. We cannot stamp out the bad portions of the human condition entire, but we can give ourselves the freedom to make our own choice. Freedom and competition has shown to bring the most people out of poverty and more vastly improve on living standards than any other system.

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Demand for an end to subsidies that tie government control to all aspects of your life, demand that businessmen to be allowed to more freely manage their own businesses, demand that businesses be freely founded by anyone and everyone. Demand of yourself your own livelihood, independent of government.