Nothing Is Eaten as Hot as It Is Cooked
Switzerland just voted on the E-ID. By a narrow margin, it passed. For anyone outside the country: the E-ID is a state-approved digital identity that lets citizens log into government and private services, sign contracts, or prove who they are — all through a single credential. The promise is efficiency and security; the fear is surveillance and control.
I didn’t cast a vote. Not because I didn’t care, but because I simply hadn’t made up my mind. I weighed the arguments and couldn’t decide what was truly best. There’s no shame in saying “I don’t know.” Better that than pretending certainty when there is none.
The sales pitch for the E-ID was sleek — convenience, security, progress. The hidden price is obvious — surveillance, dependency, control. At first glance, it feels like one of those irreversible crossroads: the population has spoken, the future is sealed. But that is not how politics works in practice.
I once took a course in Public Governance with Michi Ambühl at ETH. He’s the man who negotiated Switzerland’s treaties with the EU. At one point, he asked me to explain what cybernetics is. I told him it’s something like Daoism. He looked at me as if I’d lost my mind, then went on with his lecture. That moment stayed with me. It showed how technical his concept of cybernetics must have been; Norbert Wiener, feedback loops, control systems — while mine came through Gregory Bateson, with its emphasis on living systems and mutual adaptation. Two visions of the same word: one mechanical, one organic.
There’s an old German saying: nichts wird so heiss gegessen wie es gekocht wird. Nothing is eaten as hot as it is cooked. Laws pass, systems are introduced, but the stew cools before anyone can swallow it.
We saw this during COVID. At first, the measures were absolute. Masks, curfews, endless rules. The population obeyed. Then fatigue set in. Cracks appeared. People pushed back. Compliance thinned out long before the official story did. In the end, many of those “permanent” restrictions vanished into air.
It’s the same with E-IDs or any global scheme. They’re rolled out, tested, pushed. The government wants to see how far people will go. But politics is a cybernetic system: push one way, and the population pushes back. Sometimes subtly, sometimes openly, but always with correction.
That’s true of any political system. In some, feedback is quick and direct. In others, it’s slower, messier, harder to see. But feedback always comes. The pendulum always swings back because governments must deal with living, breathing people.
And yes, that all may sound relativistic, because it is. Even in Switzerland, if the E-ID had been rejected today, the same proposal might reappear next year, or be made mandatory by some other route. So my absence from voting today may be excused. After all, I still haven’t finished cleaning the kitchen.