The clash of terms gives an idea of how absurd and chaotic the discussion about energy prices and consumer relief has been in recent weeks.
A business category, the "allocation", is brought together with the "brake", a term that comes from physics.
You can't put a "cap" on either of them, even if "cap" and "brake" in everyday language use a similar process.
And no one wants to cross the “bridge” that is supposed to span the period up to the nationalization of the energy company Uniper.
The conceptual confusion corresponds to the course of the procedures that are intended to give legitimacy to political decisions.
"Legitimation through procedures" is a classic of sociology. In his book from 1969, the system theorist Niklas Luhmann tried to show how the political system legitimizes itself through social procedures without having to refer to the content.
How are decisions made?
It has been objected to Luhmann that the specific behavior of the actors participating in the process also plays a role and that the mere mechanics of the processes without content are not enough.
Superficially, there is nothing wrong with the processes involved in dealing with the energy crisis politically.
Part of the social process is that the different behaviors of those involved, in this case the representatives of the traffic light coalition, result in several possible courses of the process.
The actors exclude other scenarios through their actions and thus come to a conclusion.
The financial constitutional concerns that the Minister for Economic Affairs has raised play a role insofar as the law provides a framework - whereby compliance with the legal norms alone should not be confused with legitimacy.
The norms serve, a favorite term of Luhmann, to reduce complexity because they limit the spectrum of possible decisions.
What Luhmann did not seriously count on is mistrust in these procedures themselves. This does not mean the opposition's criticism of the gas levy, nor the public reaction.
Luhmann's theory does not envisage that a procedure can delegitimize itself.
Then two slow down
However, if, as in this case, you first want to decide on a levy, but those involved in the process themselves announce that they want to overturn the decided levy as quickly as possible, so that they don't even say goodbye and through a temporary reduction in VAT to replace it, there is no longer any sense to be made out.
It is no less absurd that another procedure was initiated at the same time, the Uniper nationalization, from which not the consumers but the state as the owner and recipient of the gas surcharge would have benefited.
SPD chairman Klingbeil said that in the current situation, a government “needs the strength to reconsider and correct paths”.
It is probably less a question of strength than of logic: if measure B produces opposite effects as measure A, then one cannot want to take both.
A matter of logic
It also has a delegitimizing effect when the finance minister considers the legal problems, which the economics ministry believes it should examine, to be over.
This is not a legal, but a tactical argument, because without a gas surcharge, demands are being made again for the finance minister to use his budget to help relieve the burden on consumers.
A "gas price brake" demanded that the "debt brake" be relaxed - then two brakes would slow each other down.
If you look at these events, it is clear that in the crisis situation and under time pressure there is no recourse to tried and tested measures and that individual projects are proving to be impractical.
This pattern has already become visible during the pandemic.
In principle, this cannot be avoided;
it would be avoidable, however, that the public communication about it turns out to be so disastrous again.
The way in which the political procedures are carried out casts doubt not only on their results but also on the procedures themselves.
Legitimacy cannot be obtained in the long term in this way.