French Youth's Anger Is a Warning for KangAi Commune: Fairness Decides Sustainability

In recent years, protests and even riots by young people in France have repeatedly made the news. The reasons are of course complex, but one sentiment deserves attention: a growing number of young people feel that society is unfair to them.

The older generation enjoyed better employment, housing and economic growth, and accumulated more assets. As society ages, the cost of pensions and healthcare has to be borne by those who come later. Young people, meanwhile, face pressure in employment, housing and daily life. So they ask: why should the benefits the older generation gained be paid for, more and more, by the next generation?

This reminds me of a problem KangAi Commune must guard against in its long-term development: cross-subsidization.

Mutual aid of course means that some people temporarily pay more while others temporarily receive more. I help others today, and others help me tomorrow — that is precisely the meaning of mutual aid.

What is truly dangerous is when this imbalance gradually solidifies: one group bears more of the cost over the long term, while another group remains the main beneficiary.

KangAi Commune has been running for more than ten years. As members grow older and new members join, risk differences across age groups, join years and mutual-aid plans keep changing. If a fixed direction of benefit transfer takes shape over time, then even if the commune's overall accounts stay balanced, the side that bears more will sooner or later ask:

Why is it always us who subsidize them?

Once more and more people think this way, what is affected is not just the shared amount, but people's trust in the fairness of the whole community.

Of course, we cannot pursue absolute fairness either. If everyone paid strictly according to their own disease risk — high risk pays more, low risk pays less, precisely calculated — mutual aid would ultimately turn into actuarial insurance.

So what KangAi Commune needs to find is the line in between:

Allow occasional imbalance, accept reasonable mutual help, but try to avoid long-term, fixed, one-directional cross-subsidization.

The warning that French youth's anger gives us is actually quite simple:

For a community to endure, it is not enough to balance the total accounts; the accounts between different groups must also be broadly fair.