When I was a kid, buying the baguette was my favorite adventure!
I'd go to the closest boulangerie with a few coins in francs. The baguette was cheap enough that there were always a few centimes left over. Just enough for a handful of candy!
It wasn't much. But it meant the world to me. Even after buying the essential, there was still room for the unnecessary sweet candies, the joy.
Then one day, the euro arrived.
The baguette was suddenly €1.
My candy was gone... 😭
I was still a kid. I didn't know the term "inflation". I didn't understand macroeconomics, monetary policy, or the difference between nominal and real value.
But I understood this: a world where nothing is left over feels smaller.
The official explanation was precise and boring: €1 = 6.55957 francs.
Prices would remain stable. Life would go on. In reality, three forces worked together, without coordination, but toward the same effect:
Opportunism in pricing
Small everyday items were "rounded" to psychologically cleaner euro amounts. A 3.50 franc baguette should have been €0.53. It became €0.80, then €1.
Structural cost shifts
Energy, salaries, raw materials were already increasing: the new currency made it easier to pass those increases on without visibility.
Cognitive confusion
If you are European, I'm sure you remember that: for years, people converted euros back to francs in their heads, making it hard to judge real price changes. By the time the mental switch was complete, the damage was embedded.
The point is: there's NOT ONE single entity responsible for this.
We're looking at a complex adaptive system: a web of interconnections where each actor makes decisions for their own reasons, yet those decisions compound into a structural shift.
Who orchestrated it?
- The government? No direct order.
- Bakers and shopkeepers? They acted individually, seizing a moment to adjust.
- Central banks? They set the framework but didn’t micromanage prices.
This is why it's pure Grey Zone:
Multiple actors. Mixed motives. Incremental actions. There's not one person or group responsible for stealing my candy.
The change emerges from the system itself - and no one can be put on trial.
That's also why simple blame narratives are dangerous.
The populist reflex: "It's the EU's fault, let's leave!" or "It’s the fault of X group!"... is intellectually lazy.
It ignores the fact that in a complex system, the impact is the sum of thousands of micro-decisions, feedback loops, and timing effects.
Understanding this is exactly why I created the Quantum Framework:
to map the interplay between actors, incentives, and systemic forces, and to see the whole field instead of latching onto the most convenient villain.
The psychology of "millimeters no one will fight for"
If bread had doubled in price overnight, there would have been outrage. But a 20-cent difference? That's "too small" to fight over.
Children like me noticed first because our transactions were micro. I was given the tremendous responsibility to buy baguette as a child (french people understand, that is a BIG BIG BIG DEAL).
The loss of the candy was about losing the surplus - the margin that gave my life texture. Adults rationalized it away.
The day I lost my candy money was the day I learned that power doesn't always take by force. Sometimes it takes by rounding.
And those "insignificant" cents we surrender are the cracks through which entire worlds slip away.
The Grey Zone isn't the hidden.
It's the unspoken: the quiet, cumulative changes WE accepted.
The people who win in the Grey Zone are the ones who notice the shift first and adjust before the rest.
And if you read this and think "it's just bread and candy" - you've completely missed the point.
Stay lucid,
Oriane