Nonetheless, during the same press conference, Macron declared that "delegating our food, our protection, or our ability to take care for our living … - Christian Laval

What has since become abundantly apparent is the destructive influence of behavioral economics and the so-called "nudge theory" of political decision-making, which relies on and stimuli to steer individual behavior, rather than coercion or restraint. We now know that the "nudge unit," or the "," that advises the successfully convinced the state of their theory that individuals who are too quickly constrained by severe measures will tire and relax their discipline when the epidemic reaches its peak, which is precisely when discipline is needed most. Since 2010, 's economic theory — which he outlines in the book Nudge (2009) — is widely thought to be the best means for producing "efficient state governance." This approach tells us to encourage people, without coercing them, to make the best decisions through the use of "nudges": by using gentle, indirect, comfortable and optional influences upon individuals who are still ultimately free to make their own choices. The application of this "" in the fight against the epidemic has been two-fold: (a) the rejection of any coercive measures to regulate individual behavior and (b) a preference for "barrier gestures": keep your distance, wash your hands, cough into your elbow, self-isolate if you have a fever and all for your own benefit. This wager to rely on soft, voluntary measures was risky: there is no scientific or empirical evidence demonstrating the effectiveness of this approach in the context of an epidemic. And it is now all too clear that this approach entirely failed.

It is important to keep this last point in mind, for it is crucial in terms of understanding the public character of the so-called "public" service. The precise meaning of the word "public" demands our full attention here, because it is too rarely recognized that the concept of "public" is absolutely irreducible to the "state." The term "publicum" designates not merely the state administration, but the entire community as constituted by all citizens: public services are not state services, in the sense that the state can dispense these services as it pleases, nor are they merely an extension of the state: they are public in the sense that they exist "in the service of the public." It is in this sense that they constitute a of the state toward its citizens.

The COVID-19 pandemic is an unprecedented global health, social and economic crisis. Historical comparisons are few, particularly in recent decades. This tragedy constitutes nothing less than a trial for all humanity. The two meanings of the French word "épreuve" captures the dual significance of what we now confront: épreuve in the sense of an ordeal, an immense and painful undertaking, but also a test, an evaluation, or a judgment. The pandemic, in other words, is now testing the capacity of our political and economic systems to cope with a global problem situated at the level of our individual interdependence, which is to say at the very foundation of our social life. Like a dystopia made real, the current situation provides us with a glimpse of what soon awaits humanity if global economic and political structures are unable to radically and rapidly transform in order to confront the climate change crisis.