Ursula von der Leyen and the Toxin Puzzle

The Toxin Paradox, which I discussed in my blog last week, seems to be a silly case without any reality. Where in the world would you find such an eccentric billionaire like Tramp who would give away a million dollars without getting anything back for it? And how about an intention that you don’t need to intend? Who believes that such a thing exists or rather can exist? It’s simply a contradiction. The only real thing seems to be the toxin, but who would drink it voluntarily? Nevertheless the Toxin puzzle is not as imaginary as it looks on the face of it. Even more, the case happens quite often. For example, a sponsor promises to pay your training for the marathon. You know that a marathon will not be easy for you, but you also know that later there can be many reasons to come back on your decision to run the race, and the contract allows this. You also know that the sponsor will not ask his money back. So you sign the contract.

A field of society where Toxin puzzle cases happen very often is politics. An internet website that discusses the Toxin Puzzle explains it this way:

“The most familiar example of the Kavka’s Toxin puzzle in the real world is the Political Manifesto. Before an election, a political party will release a written document outlining their policies and plans should they win office. Many of these promises may be difficult or impossible to implement in practice. Having won, the party is not obligated to follow the manifesto even if they would have lost without it. ... In this example, the Electorate is the equivalent of the Billionaire, The Manifesto Promise the equivalent of the intention to drink the toxin and implementing the policies is equivalent to drinking the toxin.” (see source below, p.31).

When I read this, I had immediately to think of the recent elections for the European Parliament (see also my blogs dated 15 and 17 July 2019). Of course, each participating party had presented its political program with promises and plans, and some of these promises and plans may be difficult or impossible to implement. But that’s not what I am thinking of. What I have in mind here is the idea of “Spitzenkandidaten” or “lead candidates”. In order to make it attractive for the electorate to vote, parties presented their lead candidates and in agreement with the result of the elections one of these candidates would become the president of the new European Commission (the executive board of the EU that runs the daily affairs). There were three such candidates: a christian-democrat, a social democrat and a liberal. It appeared to be an attractive idea, indeed, and many people went to vote. The election result was that the lead candidate of the christian-democrats, the German Manfred Weber, got the most votes, so he should become the president of the new EU Commission. Or otherwise it should have been the social-democrat lead candidate, the Dutchman Frans Timmermans, who was a good second. And as a third possibility it would also have been possible to choose the Danish liberal Magrethe Vestager. But what happened? The French president Emmanuel Macron had taken it in his head that all these candidates were unacceptable to him, and so he proposed his favourite, the German christian-democrat Ursula von der Leyen, who was unknown to most voters. Now it would have been normal that the parliament would have said: “We represent the people of Europe and the ultimate power needs to be in the parliament. So, we the parliament elect Manfred Weber (or one of the other two Spitzenkandidaten) as president.” But the parliament was afraid to display its power against such a mighty man as the French president Macron, and it gave in. In this way it happened that Mrs. Von der Leyen became the president of the new European Commission, since the European parliament refused to keep its promise and to drink the toxin.

Source

Wikipedians (ed.), Paradoxes. Situations which defies intuition. On website https://books.google.nl/books?id=DoG8QjF5q58C&pg=PA29&lpg=PA29&dq=toxin+puzzle&source=bl&ots=5gYBSoF8B1&sig=ACfU3U1DPwz7nOBJsjjmFgDKQe14qlHYsw&hl=nl&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjL5sHkk6zlAhVRLFAKHc45DB84HhDoATAGegQIBhAB#v=onepage&q=toxin%20puzzle&f=false .