News and Politics – Climb to the Stars

Heatwave [en]

It’s 9am, Sunday morning. I’m back in my flat to check the temperature. It’s creeping up already. I close everything up and shed a tear.

I got the temperature under 27°C this morning. Downstairs, in the coworking space I’m lucky to be able to hang out in, it’s nearly 1°C cooler, but also rising. At 8:30, it was already too hot to have breakfast on my balcony, like I usually do.

Lausanne is hardly the worst-hit place. I guess the lake helps a bit. Other parts of the country are suffering way worse. France, Spain… India of course.

I’ve dealt with worse heat than now when I was in India, of course. But buildings here aren’t designed for heat. My flat covers the south side of the building. Even at night when the temperature goes down (not that far down) the walls are still packed with heat they ate up during the day. The bathroom downstairs is close to 30°, though it’s on the inside of the building, because it shares a wall with the heating room.

The heating room is an oven. Now I understand (maybe) why in India we just heat the water we need when we need it, instead of having permanent hot water running around in the taps. But that’s not all of it: a few days ago I realised the radiators weren’t cold. I’d turned of the central thermostat, but clearly, the central heating was still keeping them warm. I turned them all off manually, of course, but WTF. Shouldn’t central heating be turned off in June when we already had troublesome heat in May? SMH.

I remember my first real heatwave here, back in 2003. I was writing (dictating) my dissertation. I was living and sleeping on my balcony. It was exciting.

For a few years now, we’ve had these “exceptional heatwaves” every summer. They are not exciting at all now. It’s clear they are not going away. I bought a portable A/C two years ago. I have a bunch of fans. I’m seriously thinking about putting up a ceiling fan in my bedroom. I’m wondering if heat will drive me up in the mountains ten, fifteen years from now. The fact that this will not get better is sinking in.

Until recently, I’d managed to not feel too panicky about climate change. Not that I was in denial that it was happening, but rather that I had other stuff to get worked up about. I know that solutions to a global problem like this are not individual but collective, and there are people fighting the fight. But it’s not working. I read an opinion piece the other day that actually helped me understand Extinction Rebellion – particularly the “unauthorised demonstration” part that I previously looked upon rather disapprovingly. Governments and institutions need public pressure to prioritise climate change. It’s sad, but that’s how it is. Those whose interests do not go in the direction of protecting the environment have their own ways of putting pressure on governments, and they are not shy of using them.

So today, as I closed the windows in my flat to keep the heat out, some of the hope I used to have rolled down my cheeks.

The Shattering of my Faith in Our Future [en]

I was always very optimistic regarding the future of the world. The resilience of civilization and humanity. The faith that in the long run, things would turn out OK.

I had some of this optimism for myself, too. Faith that things would improve. That bad times would pass. That I would end up finding a way.

It has served me well.

But this is not about me. This is about the world. When I was younger I wanted to believe in God. Or at the very least, in some spiritual realm that gave meaning to life and all that goes with it. I failed at believing, and at some point came to terms with it.

The world is as we see it, matter and energy as defined and measured by physics. There is magic in my world, but that is a topic for another day. It’s probably not the kind of magic you imagine.

I believed in some kind of self-regulation of the huge systems that are our societies, and even humanity as a whole. I believed that things could not, on a global scale, become fundamentally worse. That there would only be improvement, even though we would witness what looked like setbacks.

I do not believe this anymore. I have lost my optimism, over the last years. My faith has been shattered.

It started with Brexit, and the election of Donald Trump. Those were the big blows. I did not see either one coming, comfortable in my little idealistic bubble. Oh, I knew they were on the table, but I never in a million years believed they could happen.

After that, I would often think, or say, “remember Iran”. You know, those photos from the seventies? Yes. And now. Things can get much worse. Things can go “backward”. Meaningful freedoms can be lost.

Of course all this also has to do with my age. I’m closer to 50 than 40 now. When you’re a young adult, the world you’re living in is the world you’re most familiar with. Your child and teenage eyes turn into adult eyes, and you finally see things as they are, you think, doors open in front of you and you walk forward in life, hopefully with a smile, but at least with a sense of order in the world. Well, that’s how it was for me, in any case.

When you’re in your forties, you see the world change. You slowly use the world of your youth, the one you thought was “the world how it is and is supposed to be”. As years go by I find myself slowly starting to struggle with some of the changes our society is going through. I find myself looking back upon the “good ol’ times”. I pinch myself when that happens.

Brexit and Trump also finished shattering some of my beliefs about technology and the resistance to exploitation of the systems built upon it. I was aware, of course, of the plague of those who would always try to “game the system” in social networks. But I never thought – or wanted to see – that the real-world, political implications, could be so dire. I saw what good could be done, but closed my eyes to the evil. Optimism. Blame the seduction of the full half of the glass.

Then there was the pandemic. If Trump’s election made me fear for the turn our world could be taking when it came to politics, and the value of Truth, the pandemic was here. Here, there, and everywhere. I had seen things going on in Wuhan, but naively didn’t think it could hit us. It hit us hard. It hit me hard. I remember. I was at my chalet with a friend. The first cases had been detected in Switzerland. Friday, March 13th, 2020. We watched the federal government’s announcement. Schools closed. That shook me. It shook me badly. I remember thinking that the world as we knew it was over.

That was two years ago. Here in Switzerland, for most people, we’re gently trying to drift back into the “normalcy of before”. It’s a façade, of course. We know there’s no going back. But life feels back on track. Not quite, though. As if we were in a slightly alternate reality.

I think of those for whom these last two years were “formative” years. It’s not the same thing to go through two years of pandemic when you’re 45, 25, 15 or 5. I think of those, children in particular, for whom post-covid life will be “just life”. For us, older ones, there is before and after covid. The old world, and the new world. But for children, and teenagers, there will pretty much just be a world after/with covid, when it comes to the story of their lives. Just as for me, coming of age in a world where AIDS was already an established threat, the only world I know is a world where AIDS exists.

The pandemic shook me because or the disruption in our lives, the death, the exhausted medical staff, the economic impact – immediate and long-lasting. We are not out of it. And worse that that, it shook me because it brought home the fact that pandemics were possible. This one was bad. But it could have been worse. And there is no guarantee the next one is not waiting around the corner. Actually, it is – just like this one had been waiting around the corner for decades, jumping from bat to bat.

As if the craziness of the first three years of Trump’s presidency hadn’t been enough to drive home that we were living in a post-truth wold, the pandemic allowed us all, wherever we lived, to witness the damage wrought by cognitive bias, conspiracy theories, and capitalist media together.

And now Russia has invaded Ukraine.

I thought the pandemic was bad and would change our world forever. This is worse. Far worse. I never thought WWIII could happen. Now I’m not so sure. And even if it doesn’t, however this ends, the balance of power in the world is going to undergo a major shift. There will be “before”, and “after”, just as with the pandemic. I was 15 in 1989. I remember listening to “France Infos” radio, which gave news every 15 minutes, as the Berlin Wall and Nicolae Ceaușescu fell. The world felt like it was opening. Now it feels like it’s unravelling.

As I listen to news about Ukraine and cry, I realise I’m also grieving for the world I lost, a world I thought had a certain stability I could rely on, a world where autocrats don’t win, pandemics don’t kill six million people and leave so many others broken, where civilians and maternity hospitals don’t get bombed, and where truth prevails.

This shattering is not easy, as I look at it through the lens of my personal life. But however discomforting it is, it also tells me that I have the luxury of such philosophical considerations, rather than fleeing for my life in the cold and fear, and for that I am infinitely grateful.

Au temps du coronavirus [fr]

[en] The last three weeks in Vaud, coronavirus-style.

J’ai beaucoup de mal à penser à autre chose qu’à la crise actuelle. Normal, j’imagine. Comme tout le monde je suppose, je suis un peu sous le choc, quand même. On est mardi matin, 17 mars. Hier, fermeture de tous les commerces “non vitaux”, état de nécessité prononcé pour le canton. Vendredi, fermeture des stations de ski, des écoles, restrictions de distance dans les restaurants. Lundi passé seulement (il y a une éternité), l’Etat exhorte les personnes à risque de s’isoler au max. De mon côté, je vais chez le psy, à la physio, chez le véto, et j’ai une séance de comité pour Elles Entr’Aide. A ce moment-là, c’est clair, on ne se fait plus la bise, on ne se serre plus la main. Alors qu’une semaine avant, quand le Conseil Fédéral rajoute dans les mesures de protection de la population d’éviter les poignées de main, l’ambiance générale était à trouver tout ça excessif et je me demandais comment faire pour ne pas serrer la main aux gens.

C’était il y a deux semaines!

Alors effectivement, à ce moment-là, la situation locale ne paraissait pas dramatique. Le premier cas avait été détecté dans le canton le jeudi d’avant (le 27), le lendemain on apprenait l’annulation de toutes les manifestations de plus de 1000 personnes. Personnellement, c’est ça qui m’a fait l’effet d’un électrochoc, et qui m’a fait passer de “euh mais bon c’est un peu comme une grippe en plus grave” à “branle-bas de combat”. Et l’annonce “pas de poignées de main” le 3 (un gros truc quand même ici, culturellement) a fini de me faire prendre conscience qu’on n’allait pas y échapper. Y échapper? A tout ce qu’on a vu jusqu’à présent, et aux mesures encore plus sévères qui nous attendent dans les jours et semaines qui viennent.

Entre lundi et mardi (le 2 et le 3) les annulations ont commencé à pleuvoir: les cours de judo, décision difficile prise en urgence pour le lundi soir, chapeau à mon prof, sa femme, et l’équipe “de crise” qui a eu le courage d’agir rapidement alors que le public n’était pas forcément sur cette longueur d’onde; les répétitions de chant pour le concert prévu en 2021 en l’honneur de mon ancien chef de choeur décédé, qui devaient commencer mercredi; une réunion “conférence-réseautage” prévue jeudi soir. Samedi, une copine est venue chez moi; dimanche, je suis allée au hammam avec une autre.

Le 28, j’avais déjà acheté quelques boîtes de conserve supplémentaires. Je fonctionne “aux stocks” en temps normal, donc mes armoires et mon congel sont plus ou moins toujours pleins, ce qui fait que je n’ai eu qu’à compléter un peu. Mardi 3 j’ai rajouté une couche et acheté du savon liquide pour les mains (il n’en restait plus des masses en rayon). Samedi 7 j’ai fait des commandes de réserve pour les chats, vérifié que j’avais de l’avance dans mes médicaments et les leurs. Comme ça je serais tranquille.

Le premier décès dans le canton c’était le jeudi 5, une semaine tout juste après l’annonce du premier cas. Donc après-demain, cela fera trois semaines depuis le premier cas et 2 semaines depuis le premier décès.

Je sais, je n’arrête pas de calculer les jours et les semaines, parce que le temps a pris une tout autre texture que d’habitude et je m’y perds.

Hier à midi je suis allée faire des courses pour un proche et sa famille. Les rayons à Denner et à la Migros étaient encore bien vides. Certes pas par manque de vivres, mais parce que tout remettre dans les rayons, ça nécessite des bras et ça prend du temps. Tout ça en effectif réduit vu que les personnes à risques doivent rester chez elles. Le rayon des légumes était bien fourni, par contre, je pense que c’est celui qu’ils ont restocké en priorité.

Si on fait une commande sur Le Shop, elle n’arrivera pas avant le 1er avril (hier c’était le 31 mars, dimanche soir le 27). Les gens ont peur, c’est normal, mais de grâce, ne cédez pas à la panique. Si vous avez de quoi tenir 2 semaines, vous êtes OK. Si vous êtes “à risque” (plus de 65 ans ou maladie chronique”, de grâce, faites-vous livrer ou demandez à vos proches ou voisins de faire vos courses. Il y a sur Facebook des groupes d’entraide qui voient le jour, et j’y vois plein de personnes proposer leur aide pour ce genre de chose. (Lausanne, Morges, Riviera, Yverdon… cherchez “entraide” et le nom de votre ville/région sur Facebook.)

Je ne suis pas trop inquiète pour moi. Je suis non seulement hors du temps mais hors du monde, en arrêt de travail encore, alors qu’avant mon opération j’étais déjà en recherche d’emploi. Proprement dans les limbes, mais ça rend le confinement facile. Alors bon, je tournicote un peu, cherchant comment je peux être utile autrement qu’en ne sortant pas (déjà utile), en “faisant campagne” autour de moi pour que les gens prennent les mesures au sérieux et se protègent (beaucoup sur Facebook), en me demandant où mes compétences en transformation numérique pourraient servir, parce que faut se le dire, cette crise va donner un gros coup d’accélérateur à la numérisation. (Si vous avez besoin d’aide pour vous mettre à Skype ou aux achats en ligne, faites-moi signe.)

Je suis un peu inquiète pour mes proches à risque, mais ils semblent être sages. Bien plus inquiète pour nous en tant que collectivité, pour les professionnels de la santé et tout ceux qui voient leurs conditions de travail chamboulées, mes anciens collègues indépendants qui voient venir la grande galère financière (j’espère vraiment que l’Etat va mettre en place quelque chose pour eux). Inquiète aussi pour les personnes déjà isolées et qui en souffrent, qui vont se voir encore plus isolées avec le confinement actuel. Je me demande à quoi ressemblera notre monde post-crise, avec le coût économique et humain que nous allons payer, la récession inévitable, mais peut-être aussi des transformations positives.

Il y a bien des années, alors que je m’étais retrouvée en consultation aux urgences psychiatriques, on m’avait dit “alors vous êtes en crise, mais la crise c’est une chance, car c’est l’opportunité de réel changement”. Je crois que c’est également vrai à l’échelle de la société.

Prenez soin de vous et de vos proches. Soyez sages. Et pour les “colibris” parmi vous, ici on est réellement dans une situation où “chacun doit faire sa part”. C’est le moment de mettre en pratique.

Lutter vainement [fr]

[en] The fight against self-scanning systems in supermarkets is... useless.

Cet article devrait être un long article. Et je suis presque en train de ne pas l’écrire à cause de ça. Je repousse. Je suis un peu trop mal réveillée dans le train pour exposer clairement une problématique complexe avec plein de ramifications.

Alors cet article sera incomplet et imparfait et suscitera des réactions que j’aurais voulu prévenir en étant exhaustive dans mes propos. Tant pis.

L’autre jour, je vois passer un appel au boycott des scanners à la Migros. Parce qu’on voudrait pas remplacer les caissières par des machines, quand même. La discussion va bon train sur le mur de la personne tentant de lancer ce mouvement (le lien ci-dessous vous amène directement à mon premier commentaire), puis sur mon propre mur où j’ai partagé l’histoire.

Le manque de perspective historique et de pensée “systémique” dans ce genre de discussion me consterne. Durant la révolution industrielle, les luddites n’ont pas réussi à stopper l’avancée de la technologie en brisant les machines. Le plus gros employeur de Stockholm n’est plus la fabrique de glace, et nous avons l’électricité et des réfrigérateurs dans nos foyers. Les lavandières ont disparu. Le conducteurs de fiacre aussi. Nous avons tous un téléphone portable, même ceux qui ont dit “moi, jamais”.

Personne ne contrôle les avancées technologiques et les bouleversements sociétaux qui vont avec. Tout au plus pouvons-nous exercer une influence. Je prends le parti de mettre mon énergie là où sa dépense n’est pas futile.

Je reproduis ici mon commentaire initial et quelques autres extraits choisis.

Grand angle: le monde change, en permanence, et la technologie a toujours remplacé les humains (tout en ouvrant d’autres possibilités). On ne voit plus de conducteurs de fiacres, qu’on peut imaginer s’étant soulevés contre l’invasion des voitures. Il n’y a plus de fabriques de glace, avec son réseau de livraison: à Stockholm, la fabrique de glace, plus gros employeur de la ville, s’est battue pour interdire l’électricité dans les ménages privés, car cela permettait aux gens d’avoir des frigos et ça les rendait obsoletes.
Grand angle aussi: alors que certains métiers disparaissent, que fait-on (au niveau société) pour requalifier/réorienter/former les personnes qui en font les frais? C’est là qu’il fait mettre de l’énergie, plutôt que dans un boycott aussi futile qu’inutile, qui s’apparente au « clictivisme » tant décrié.
Je vais aller déterrer le reportage sur la fabrique de glace et un autre sur la prise en main (aux USA, imaginez!) des travailleurs dont le métier disparaît.
Et regarder quelqu’un qui est à la caisse en se disant « s’il n’y a plus l caisse, que va-t-elle faire? » je trouve ça d’un snobisme insupportable.
Réfléchissons et agissons là où ça a une chance d’avoir un effet, plutôt que de s’agiter vainement. L’absence de perspective historique derrière ce type d’initiative me désole.

La technologie a toujours remplacé l’homme. Regardez la révolution industrielle… nous ne vivons plus dans le même monde. Tous les métiers qui pourront être remplacés par des robots (machines) le seront à terme. Restera pour l’humain les tâches cognitives complexes qu’on ne peut ni modéliser ni recréer, et… le relationnel, le lien. Ce qui touche à l’humain.
C’est pour ça, en passant, qu’on fait mieux de mettre notre énergie à défendre un RBI qu’à boycotter des scanners. Les luddites n’ont pas gagné l’histoire.

Notre vision de l’histoire est myope: on regarde « notre » histoire (qu’on appelle le présent) avec beaucoup moins de distance que l’histoire « historique ». Pour les personnes de l’époque, ce qui se passait était très semblable à ce que l’on vit aujourd’hui. Notre présent n’est pas, historiquement, si exceptionnel que ça. Plus proche de nous, les téléphones portables ont rendu quasi inutiles les cabines téléphones. On ne s’est pas ému du sort des gens qui les posaient, parce qu’invisibles (au contraire de la personne à la caisse à qui on dit bonjour en la regardant dans les yeux). Mais ces gens ne posent plus de cabines téléphoniques. Toute l’industrie qui les produisait a rétréci.
Est-ce qu’on va jeter nos smartphones à la poubelle pour recréer ces postes?
Est-ce qu’on va boycotter l’e-banking et retourner faire la queue au guichet? Idem pour acheter nos billets de trains (pas d’automate, de grâce, pensez à la personne qui gagne sa vie en vendant les billets au guichet!)
Ce que nous vivons ici est complètement banal, historiquement, et l’histoire nous dit comment ça finit.

En Inde, il y a près de vingt ans, j’ai été choquée de voir des gens sous le soleil brûlant à casser des cailloux au bord de la route. Je disais “mais y’a des machines pour ça! c’est les travaux forcés, ce que font ces gens!” — et on me répondait: oh, mais si on les remplace par des machines, ils vont faire quoi comme travail, ces pauvres gens?
C’est comme ça qu’on justifie l’exploitation de son prochain…

Je doute qu’une action concertée, toute pleine de bonnes intentions soit-elle, est capable d’avoir un poids plus fort que les avantages qu’amène une innovation technologique.
Et je pense aussi que l’innovation gagne toujours et a toujours gagné, tout au cours de l’histoire. Plutôt que lutter contre le courant et l’avancée inéluctable du “progrès” (je déteste ce terme car il y a un jugement de valeur), je préfère me pencher sur comment on va “faire avec” ce nouveau monde que nous créons au fil du temps.

The Future of Fake News [en]

[fr] Ce n'est pas souvent que la technologie me fait peur. Ça doit être que j'ai plus de 35 ans, maintenant. On peut maintenant, à partir de 20 à 40 minutes d'échantllons vocaux, faire dire ce qu'on veut à quelqu'un en tapant le texte en question. On peut également "animer" un visage dans une vidéo avec ses propres expressions. Ce n'est pas encore parfait, certes, mais on y sera très vite. Les "fake news" ont encore de beaux jours devant eux...

I’ve listened to the first half of Radiolab’s “Breaking News” episode and I’m terrified. Or maybe I’m just over 35. In a nutshell, the time where you can easily produce convincingly real “fake audio” and “fake video” (and mash the two together) is just around the corner.

This is the future of fake news. If people can be fooled by fact-less text, fake quotes stuck next to photos, photoshopped pictures and memes, even though we know all these things exist… What is going to happen when pretty much anybody can make anybody else (including 45 or other political figures) say anything?

At one point in the distant future we might get over it. We may learn not to trust anything recorded anymore, because it might be fake. We might fall back on face-to-face presence, being there in meatspace, seeing and hearing unmediated.

I have no concern that forensic scientists will be able to tell doctored media from undoctored media. But that will not help the court of public opinion much.

I’m worried that we, as a society, a culture, will not be able to learn fast enough to stay ahead of how technology is changing our access to information, and that this will be the end of the world as we know it.

Hopefully, it’s just that I’m over 35.

Je refuse [fr]

Je refuse:

de me laisser terroriser
de propager la peur et l’impuissance autour de moi
de faire le jeu du petit nombre qui sèment la mort pour faire parler d’eux
de gaspiller ainsi mon énergie et celle de mon entourage.

Choice [en]

Earlier today, I was listening to Malcolm Gladwell on the TED Radio Hour podcast. He was talking about choice architecture. In short, how the way we frame the available choices influences decisions (think: opt-in or opt-out, for organ donors for example). James Clear has made me think about this a lot, under the title of “environment design”.

A podcast or two later I’m listening to Fresh Air, about Bannon and Sessions vision for remaking America. Terry Gross and her guest are talking about Breitbart and the kind of coverage it puts forward, namely crimes committed by immigrants.

Do you see the link?

The media landscape we float in, the ideas we’re exposed to, the articles we read — they are the environment in which we make our decisions about what to believe. They are the choice architecture of our beliefs. They follow the path of least resistance. That is why things repeated often enough become truth. Choice architecture.

Note: don’t see a title? Normal, this is my first aside.

Too Much News? [en]

[fr] Il y a bien des années j'ai cessé de regarder les nouvelles à la télé, de lire les journaux, etc. Je m'en suis trouvée bien moins angoissée. Insidieusement, je me suis remise à suivre l'actualité du monde, via Facebook surtout. Suis-je retombée dans le piège de l'angoisse de l'actu? Est-ce que ce qui se passe maintenant est beaucoup plus grave que ce qui se passait il y a dix ans? J'ai toujours été très optimiste quant à l'avenir de l'humanité, mais ces derniers mois ont changé ça. Des fois je me demande si je devrais me lancer en politique ou alors tout débrancher et acheter des chèvres.

Many years ago I stopped watching TV news or reading the papers, because seeing all these terrible things happening in the world and that I was powerless about only managed to make me anxious. I became much less anxious after that.

Now, slowly, stealthily, “the news” has crept back into my life, through social media. And at some point, I started “following” again. Is what’s happening in the world now worse and more important than what was going on 10 years ago? Or have I just fallen into the same trap?

I used to feel pretty optimistic about where the world was going, although in my day-to-day life I am much more of a pessimist. I believe in resilience of social structures and societies and humanity. But these last few months have changed that. I now find myself very worried about where the world is headed.

Do I worry more because I consume more news? Or do I worry more because it is more worrisome? Or both?

There are days where I feel that maybe the solution is go either “all in” or “all out”. Dive into politics, join a party, get involved beyond “Facebook activism”. Or cut news out of my life again.

Originally published as a Facebook post.

Paris: Trois Saines Sources Post-Attentats [fr]

[en] Three sources of sanity, in French, after the Paris attacks.

Je marchais tranquillement pieds nus à travers Kolkata pour aller à mon premier cours de Hindi. Pieds nus, parce que ma sandale m’avait lâchée à peine sortie de la maison, et que je n’avais pas le temps de faire demi-tour. A l’ère de Facebook, j’ai pris une photo de la sandale, je l’ai partagée et… j’ai vu qu’on s’affolait au sujet de Paris.

Les attentats m’ont aspirée à nouveau dans Facebook pour quelques jours, alors que j’avais bien décroché… avant que je ne décroche à nouveau. Pas de grands discours sur les attentats à vous faire, parce que c’est déprimant et décourageant, et parce que s’abreuver aux choses sinistres de ce monde sur lesquelles on n’a pas pris ne fait pas du bien à l’âme.

Mais de ces trois ou quatre jours plongée dans mon fil d’actualités, je vous ressors deux vidéos et un texte, à voir/lire absolument. Oui il y en a d’autres. J’ai choisi ce trois. Même si je sais que le délire sécuritaire gagnera (il gagne déjà) et que les choses vont empirer, avant un jour, je l’espère, s’arranger à nouveau.

Et puis, last but not least, un texte dont je vous donne ici un extrait, mais allez le lire en entier: “Monsieur le Président, vous êtes tombé dans le piège!”

Bref, sans l’invasion idiote de Bush en Irak, il n’aurait jamais été question de Daech. C’est par millions que nous avons manifesté contre cette guerre en 2003, moi aussi, et la désapprobation était universelle. Et nous avions raison. Cela, non pas parce que nous étions capables de prédire l’avenir, nous n’étions pas clairvoyants à ce point. Mais nous en sommes pleinement conscients aujourd’hui : ce qui s’est passé dans la nuit de vendredi à Paris est une conséquence indirecte de la rhétorique de guerre que votre collègue Bush a employée en septembre 2001.

Swiss Monsoon: Ashley Madison Leaks, Minimum Wage, And Healthcare [en]

[fr] Les fuites de comptes Ashley Madison et pourquoi je ne participe pas aux réjouissances concernant la mise à nu des infidèles. Mes petites théories perso sur le salaire minimum (fausse bonne idée) et le système de santé suisse (bon équilibre des pouvoirs).

After a tropical summer, the monsoon. It’s pouring all its worth outside. No, it’s not very pretty.

Ashley Madison leaks. Another opportunity to drag “nobodies” into the spotlight and shame them. Oh, the horror of the affair! I don’t have proper stats handy, but cheating is something roughly half of people do at some point, if my memory serves me right. If it’s not more. It’s a small crime. Yes, it’s ugly, it’s a betrayal, a breach of trust, and can even endanger your partner if you’re having unprotected sex. Lying is ugly (don’t I know it). But in the grand scheme of things, it’s a commonplace transgression. That usually has a story. Anyway, my purpose is not to discuss adultery in length or excuse it (go read Dan Savage again), but to invite those who may be perched there to descend from their moral high horses.

Does being on the Ashley Madison leaks list mean you should be outed to all those who know you as a cheater, maybe ruin your marriage beyond repair, and even damage your career? (And just sayin’ — not all those with Ashley Madison accounts are cheating scumbags.)

So, I will not gloat about these possibly lying and cheating people who are now outed to the world. Not because I think they have done no wrong, but because I do not think that the public square should be the one to judge their crimes. (Read my patchwork post from the chalet for some background.)

And then there is this:

if anyone is still trying to justify the ashley madison leaks, read this: pic.twitter.com/SfS7mcu4Si

— Sarah Nyberg (@srhbutts) August 20, 2015

Josh Duggar? I will allow myself some schadenfreude, given the guy has made a career shaming others for their sexual orientations, preferences, or even gender. He’s not a nobody. He’s a celebrity with a big PR machine. Different can of fish.

I didn’t just want to talk about Ashley Madison — I actually took notes of the various things I would blog about in my “next post, this week, oh next week, ouch another week has gone by”.

There’s a very interesting Planet Money episode on the birth of the minimum wage. It’s funny that for the US it is so obvious that there must be a minimum wage. Yeah, guys — it didn’t always exist. Here in Switzerland, there is no minimum wage. On the one hand I think it’s important to ensure people are paid fairly. But on the other hand it seems to me that setting a minimum wage makes us run two systemic dangers:

The first is “tampering with the system” of offer and demand. This is not a very palatable point of view, and it’s certainly shaped by the fact Switzerland has a very low employment rate. I like to believe that if something is really underpaid, people will not take the job. But I know this is wishful thinking, to some extent. When you are desperate, you will even take a bad deal. But does artificially raising the bar for the price of labour solve the underlying issue, which might simply be that there is just not enough work for everybody anymore, which may call for much more radical solutions than a minimum wage?
The second, way less far-fetched, is priming. When there is a minimum wage, this in a way sends a signal that if you’re paying that amount, you’re “OK”. What are you complaining about, you’re getting the minimum wage! I worry that if we do set a minimum wage, salaries which used to be just above might end up being “attracted” to that theoretical minimum. If everybody is paying minimum wage, you don’t have much choice but minimum wage. With no “reference point”, employers will probably be more free to compete to attract employees by varying how much they pay. I realise this is coming back to my first argument, and assuming a system in which there is “enough work”, so I’m not sure how things hold up when employees are competing for just any kind of employment.

Does anybody know of research around these questions? I’d definitely be interested in reading more on the topic.

This slightly “political” topic brings me to one of my little theories about the world. It has to do with healthcare. Healthcare has always been of a particular interest to me, probably because I use medical services quite a bit, and maybe also because I had heart surgery when I was a little girl and quite liked my hospital experience then.

I have people close to me in various countries, not the least my grandparents in the UK, and close friends in the US (and we hear enough horror stories about US healthcare, don’t we). I’ve lived in India (OK, extremes). I am in love with the Swiss healthcare system. And I have my little theory about why it is so good.

First, here’s how it works:

basic insurance (which actually covers a lot, determined by law) is compulsory; if you’re really too broke to pay for it (300-400 CHF/month roughly) your town will normally pitch in
when you go to the doctor, you pay the bill directly, then send it to your insurance which reimburses 90% of it; every year, you pay the first 300-2000CHF of your bills before getting reimbursed (you choose the “franchise” and your monthly insurance bill is reduced if you take a higher one)
for fancy stuff like alternate healthcare, private rooms in private clinics, etc, there are optional “complementary insurances”; they can refuse to take you on, but once you’re on, you’re on

So, it’s quite expensive, but the quality of care is really good. The reason I think it works well is that there is a balance between those parties who have a vested interest in costs being high (doctors etc.) and those who have a vested interest in keeping it low (insurance companies).

This means:

nobody can get dropped by their insurance because they get sick, or some “preexisting condition” BS
your insurance is not tied to your employer
“everybody” has insurance (quotes, because it’s probably not the case for a tiny marginalised fraction of the population)
you are free to see the doctor your want
no huge waiting lists for specialists, or hospitals, or doctors, or whatever
no quotas (your “GP” has more than 8 minutes to see you, and will just charge more if you end up needing a 45 minute consultation)
you get the bills, so you have an awareness how much your healthcare is costing
the quality of healthcare is high pretty much everywhere.

It’s not perfect. Ask Swiss people, they will complain about the healthcare system all day if you let them.

For me, the US is an example of a system where the people who have a vested interest in raising the costs have too much power. That’s how you end up with ghastly expensive bills for things like a drip, and insurances which have no incentive to defend your interests, as they can seemingly easily get rid of you if you become too expensive.

We see this in two areas here in Switzerland:

dental care
pet insurances.

Dental care insurances are not compulsory and not regulated. We are used to paying our dentists out-of-pocket. Having anybody in this country look at your teeth costs an arm and a leg, and insurances are commonly perceived as “not interesting” to have. Easier to drive to France (that’s what I do).

As for pets, we have seen insurances show up these last years. I got one for Tounsi as he was young enough, and it did serve me well as I ended up with thousands of francs of vet bills a couple of summers back. But the insurance has a clause for “chronic conditions” where they only pay for care during the three first months, and then they don’t cover it anymore. Sounds a lot like something one might find in human insurances on the other side of the pond?

As for the UK, it suffers from the opposite problem. As everything is state-run, and paid for by taxes, the parties looking to minimise the cost of healthcare end up having too much power. You end up with ridiculous quotas, sub-standard care, huge waiting lists. Sure, it costs less, but the quality of healthcare takes a dive.

What do you think of my “perfection in the balance of power” theory? Specially interested in your views if you’re an expat and have first-hand experience of different healthcare systems.