Security theater, illogical investments and other random thoughts

Please select the secure lane

Here on the right we have a gate at our campus at work. Looks pretty secure, no? It’s certainly a solid piece of work, fully capable of stopping the average thief or vandal.

Unless, of course, that vandal has the sense to look an inch left of the gate, where there is open road – see below.



(Okay, in all fairness – they are in the process of dismantling the whole gate/fence thing and this is just an in-between step..)

In case of a heart attack, please run that way

While in reality this is probably a good health care service to have around, I still found this sign at a mall in Monaco quite funny.

If this is how the country is run when times are good..

.. what will happen when times are not so good, as will soon happen? Finland has been experiencing good – in some sense even unprecedented and certainly above EU average – economic growth for the past years. Would this be a logical time to try to invest in the future of the country?

One would like to think so, but apparently the government doesn’t quite agree. For one, we all know mental health care is in a pretty shoddy shape. Outpatient treatment has come to mean abandonment. And we all know what happens to mental patients when they’re abandoned, don’t we? Do they magically heal themselves. No they don’t. The regular health care is struggling with worsening labor shortage.

Meanwhile, child care is also another area that’s not being run well – group sizes are ridiculously big and day care is hard to find with long waiting lists. Many other important sectors are also running short of money.

One has to wonder whether it makes sense to invest in overpriced infrastructure projects and on pampering the willingly unemployed while skimping on preventive care in good times? Big infrastructure investments for one would be so much better done in times of an economic slowdown when they’d be cheaper and provide some jobs as well as economic stimulus. I’m pretty sure this will be contrasted by similarly dumb counter-moves when times are bad.