[HN Gopher] Switzerland wil have a referendum to cap population ...
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Switzerland wil have a referendum to cap population at 10M
Author : napolux
Score : 257 points
Date : 2026-06-08 19:09 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.admin.ch)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.admin.ch)
| amtamt wrote:
| This seems a much more rational approach than pure political
| agenda driven fear mongering campaigns against immigrants.
| lukan wrote:
| Hm. Are there any difference in the consequences for the
| immigrants, if they are kicked out because of arbitrary
| population cap, instead of anti-migration laws?
| fractallyte wrote:
| Why would you assume the population cap is arbitrary? There's
| a calculable limit to the population an area of land can
| sustain. (Yes, some agricultural practices can mitigate that,
| but that should also be weighed against culture and history,
| and how much change is acceptable.)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrying_capacity
| lukan wrote:
| Ok, so how to calculate it for switzerland in a non
| arbitrary way?
|
| (Btw. I believe switzerland is not trying to be self
| sufficient anyway, but donimport lots of stuff, like most
| other countries do)
| ninjagoo wrote:
| > There's a calculable limit to the population an area of
| land can sustain. (Yes, some agricultural practices can
| mitigate that, but that should also be weighed against
| culture and history, and how much change is acceptable.)
|
| Ah yes, folks fighting the good Malthusian fight since
| 1798, and yet to see a win. LoL. [1]
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusianism#Criticism
| d1sxeyes wrote:
| As far as I understand, action begins when the population
| hits 9.5M, so likely no-one gets kicked out, but fewer new
| visas will be approved, etc.
| herbst wrote:
| This. As immigrant I don't feel threatened by this at all.
| I can't vote, and I wouldn't vote for SVP but as far as I
| can tell this makes kinda sense.
| lukan wrote:
| I am pretty sure there are many people living in swiss with
| temporary visa's and those will then be de facto kicked
| out, if they do not get their permissions extended.
| amunozo wrote:
| What's rational in the arbitrary number of 10 millions for no
| reason at allM
| naths88 wrote:
| It is completely irrational. But the UDC knows it, pure
| manipulation of the masses.
| herbst wrote:
| It's not completely irrational. It's a fixed placative
| number yes.
|
| But reality is also we don't produce more food than we
| already do. More people means more import and it's actually
| lowering the quality of the available food, making shopping
| more complicated, etc. And that's just the food quality
| aspect, what about pensions? Health care? ...
| foldr wrote:
| >what about pensions? Health care?
|
| What about health care if there's no more 'room' for the
| immigrants who make up a substantial fraction of health
| workers in Switzerland?
| logancbrown wrote:
| Swiss people are perfectly capable of becoming health
| workers? What kind of argument is this?
| foldr wrote:
| That's an option, but it takes a long time to train and
| recruit locally, costs a lot of money, and you'll
| probably have to increase salaries to get the required
| numbers. If there were an easy and cheap way to recruit
| all the required staff locally, that would already be
| happening.
| acivitillo wrote:
| What is rational about this exactly? They share no borders with
| the countries most immigrants come from, they are moving the
| problem to Spain, Italy, Greece.
| FabCH wrote:
| Vast majority of immigrants to Switzerland come from Spain,
| Italy, Greece and other EU countries...
| tonfa wrote:
| Germany (16% of recent immigration), followed by France and
| Italy (12% and 11%).
|
| https://cms.news.admin.ch/fileservice/sdweb-docs-prod-
| nsbcch...
|
| (page 5)
| FabCH wrote:
| This is about Swiss - EU relations. Everyone understands that a
| yes vote means the Swiss equivalent of ,,exiting the EU".
|
| All Swiss-EU contracts contain a ,,Guillotine clause" where if
| one contract is broken, all are immediately gone. The
| initiative explicitly requires breaking the freedom of movement
| contract, which immediately severs all other links to the EU.
|
| This _is_ pure political agenda driven campaign using
| immigrants.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| This is not a vote for Switzerland to exit the EU...for
| obvious reasons. It is a vote to exit the Schengen.
| FabCH wrote:
| Which immediately triggers the guillotine clause in all
| other bilateral treaties including movement of goods and
| services, Horizon, energy market etc.
|
| ,,Exiting the EU" is a perfectly adequate way to summarize
| it to a world audience that doesn't care about the details.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| I'm pretty sure you just pissed off a bunch of Swiss
| citizens claiming they are voting to exit the EU. It's
| just insulting and insensitive.
|
| Incidentally, when brexit was being voted, the only
| person I knew who thought it was a good thing was Swiss.
| They are just fiercely independent.
| tonfa wrote:
| "the swiss equivalent"
|
| As OP explains, freedom of movement can't be stopped in
| isolation from the rest of the bilaterals.
|
| (btw funnily Schengen is just about the border control,
| we're talking about freedom of movement which is a
| different thing, e.g. UK wasn't in Schengen but the freedom
| of movement applied to UK as well before brexit, tho I
| guess people use Schengen interchangeably)
| soco wrote:
| Even worse then - no more visa free travel, and no more
| international collaboration on crime. I must wonder, who
| would profit from these?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _All Swiss-EU contracts contain a ,,Guillotine clause"
| where if one contract is broken, all are immediately gone.
| The initiative explicitly requires breaking the freedom of
| movement contract, which immediately severs all other links
| to the EU_
|
| Why does it need to be? Would freedom of permanent movement
| still be something Europeans would vote for today? Will the
| EU really hold hard on this line with Switzerland? (And does
| it make political sense to?)
| FabCH wrote:
| Support for EU within EU is growing since the war in
| Ukraine and has gone to overdrive since Trump 2.0. No
| current political party except for fringe parties in any EU
| state advocates for exiting the EU or ending the four
| freedoms. It's reasonable to say that yes, EU citizens do
| approve of freedom of movement in EU. They probably do want
| to limit freedom of non-EU citizens though...
|
| ... which is exactly why the EU would terminate agreements
| with Switzerland if we start first. And why it would make
| political sense. They made that quite clear with the UK.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Support for EU within EU is growing since the war in
| Ukraine_
|
| I believe you. But hard numbers?
|
| > _No current political party except for fringe parties
| in any EU state advocates for exiting the EU or ending
| the four freedoms_
|
| Eh, there seems to be massive demand for modifying either
| freedom of movement or the context around it.
|
| > _They made that quite clear with the UK_
|
| The UK invoked Article 50. That wouldn't happen here.
| FabCH wrote:
| There is no demand for modifying freedom of movement
| within EU. It's not even a topic in most EU countries.
|
| What IS a topic, is preventing non-EU migration, and that
| has broad support and slowly all parties are moving in
| that direction.
|
| And we are NOT EU. But for now, they basically go ,,yes
| yes, but we think of you as EU because we are so tightly
| connected".
|
| So what do you expect to happen if we push the point and
| make them treat us as non-EU?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _There is no demand for modifying freedom of movement
| within EU_
|
| Again, based on what polling?
|
| > _what do you expect to happen if we push the point and
| make them treat us as non-EU?_
|
| I frankly don't expect the EU to be unreasonably
| spiteful. (And for the record, I don't think the EU was
| spiteful with the UK.)
| greggoB wrote:
| > Again, based on what polling?
|
| Do you have evidence/polling to suggest otherwise?
| surgical_fire wrote:
| > Would freedom of permanent movement still be something
| Europeans would vote for today?
|
| My guess is yes.
|
| It's one of the best things that the EU brings.
| ninjagoo wrote:
| > Why does it need to be? Would freedom of permanent
| movement still be something Europeans would vote for today?
|
| Freedom of movement for labor is absolutely critical to
| counterbalance the freedom of movement that capital has,
| otherwise it leads to mass exploitation of labor and rising
| levels of inequality, which leads to, well, the French
| approach to the bourgeois problem.
| amtamt wrote:
| Of course it is political agenda driven, but at least from
| surface it does not have _fear mongering_ vibe, comparing for
| example with Sweden which did not conclude citizenship
| applications and applied back dated refusal. Also politician
| openly attribting all immigrants as source of increasing
| crime and lowering education levels.
|
| 10m is larger than current resident counts, so people moving
| in can decide now if they want to move with uncertainty. It
| is not what everyone would like, but it is more
| understandable that recent Swedish changes, for example.
| slopinthebag wrote:
| I agree. Every country has a limit, unspoken or not, let the
| people decide. Anything less is undemocratic.
| jrflo wrote:
| So this is essentially a way to reduce immigration to the
| country? And if they get close to the cap they will "need to take
| measures, particularly in the areas of asylum and family
| reunification."
|
| Would be curious to learn more about why this is being proposed.
| naths88 wrote:
| Here you go (if you understand French, German, Italian or
| Romansh, there is a video)
|
| https://www.admin.ch/fr/initiative-durabilite
|
| https://www.udc.ch/actualites/campagnes/pas-de-suisse-a-10-m...
| soco wrote:
| The initiator party wants to get Switzerland out of Schengen
| and of the EU bilaterals - which will happen as a consequence
| if this passes. Like a Brexit, basically.
|
| Edit: but the CHexit will work just fine, because of the Swiss
| exceptionalism.
| amunozo wrote:
| Way worse than Brexit, as Switzerland is much smaller,
| landlocked and had no colonies or anything like that. This
| would be a suicide for the country. Just populism to mobilize
| the electorate.
| greenavocado wrote:
| Imagine how crazy it is to call a population cap an act of
| "suicide."
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Imagine how crazy it is to think "Switzerland out of
| Schengen" isn't.
|
| It's a small, landlocked country, surrounded on all sides
| by Schengen nations, that until recently delegated air
| defense to the EU outside of their air force's _office
| hours_. https://www.theguardian.com/world/shortcuts/2014/
| feb/19/swis...
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Plenty of us remember when Switzerland was not in the
| Schengen though. This might be good for Americans, who
| haven't been able to get working visas in Switzerland
| since EU countries now have priority. But otherwise, I
| don't see much changing beyond border procedures.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| As with Brexit, _leaving_ is likely to result in a much
| stricter regime than the status quo from before the
| establishment of the system.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| True, maybe. It is really hard to say. I'm not pro
| leaving in any sense (beyond being an American who used
| to work in Switzerland and wouldn't have that chance
| today because of the Schengen).
| luke5441 wrote:
| Most of the downsides would be on the goods side. Swiss
| companies would loose market access and the chance of
| "better" trade agreements is even worse then the UK,
| especially currently.
| greenavocado wrote:
| I already pass through Swiss customs when driving in, so
| it makes virtually no difference to me besides slowing
| things down at the border potentially.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Schengen covers _border_ controls (i.e. immigration
| /visits), not _customs_ ones (the stuff you bring with).
| greenavocado wrote:
| When you drive through there is someone standing looking
| at the line of cars and if they don't like the way you
| look they point to the side and you have to explain
| yourself and your cargo. It's like an arbitrary border
| control right now.
|
| Most of the time I'm waved through.
| herbst wrote:
| To be fair there is the same thing between Austria and
| Germany for example. Except it's more strict there even.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Yes, I'm aware of the current state of things.
|
| This is a proposal to _change_ that state to something
| far stricter in this regard.
| greenavocado wrote:
| When the neighboring countries become a threat again,
| they will place high explosives back inside the bridges
| and mountain passes.
| herbst wrote:
| Not sure if they actually removed it in all the places,
| except that one bridge by Basel everyone know about.
| izacus wrote:
| Well they also blow up 70% of their exports? :P
| skywhopper wrote:
| At the very least it's an infringement of human rights.
| joe_mamba wrote:
| Yes, because in the human rights bill it says that
| everyone in the world has the right to go live in
| Switzerland.
| azan_ wrote:
| Is being able to move to Switzerland really an universal
| human right?
| throw-the-towel wrote:
| Tell that to the EU.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| This is only about the Schengen, Switzerland is not a part
| of the EU, and even before the Schengen, the borders
| between the EU and Switzerland weren't heavily controlled.
| I got in trouble at German airport for going by train from
| Lausanne to Milan, and then plane to Berlin, I had no entry
| step into the Schengen because they didn't bother doing
| that on trains (pre-Schengen).
|
| Everything else is negotiated under separate treaties. This
| would revert Switzerland to pre-Schengen, which is sad, but
| it wouldn't be suicidal.
| tonfa wrote:
| > This is only about the Schengen, Switzerland is not a
| part of the EU
|
| Not really, the bilateral are a package and the EU
| doesn't want CH to pick and chose.
|
| If freedom of movement stops, a whole lot of thing also
| stop. It happened the last time SVP got something similar
| voted on (introduction of quota for foreign immigration),
| on a smaller scale (erasmus and horizon which are the
| higher ed and academic research collaboration, CH was a
| heavy recipient of the latter).
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _the bilateral are a package and the EU doesn 't want
| CH to pick and chose_
|
| It really depends who is in power where when and if the
| 10mm limit is crossed. If there is a conservative in
| Paris _or_ Berlin, chances are Switzerland can simply
| abrogate Schengen.
| tonfa wrote:
| Unlike UK, the impact to the EU is minimum and
| Switzerland doesn't have leverage (if the EU still
| stands).
|
| Of course if you have EU dismantlers in power anyway in
| FR/DE, they'll just be happy to sabotage.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _unless you 're Swiss, your opinion is irrelevant_
|
| I think we do bilaterally with our trading
| partners/border friends.
|
| Freedom of movement across the EU has created a massive
| backlash. Politicians can keep ignoring that. Or they can
| modify Schengen, perhaps by admitting that FOM makes
| immigration decisions a collective one. (Germany letting
| in a massive wave of immigration means a massive wave of
| immigrants for everyone.)
| jltsiren wrote:
| Schengen is a minor treaty about border controls. The
| actual issue are the Bilateral I agreements, which link
| free movement with many aspects of free trade. If
| Switzerland drops that, it needs new free trade
| agreements, which take many years to negotiate and
| ratify.
| izacus wrote:
| Where do you pull this kind of nonsense from? This didn't
| work out for much bigger UK and UK isn't sorrounded by
| EU.
| Yizahi wrote:
| I wish Schengen would one day apply mirror visit
| policies, to make countries taste their own poison. Like
| - "Ok UK, you want out of Schengen? Fine. You will now
| pay 162 EUR for a single one time entry per person. Thank
| you very much for your interest.". Or "Oh, you want a 5
| year multi entry visa, which EU can grant for like 30-60
| EUR? It will be reciprocal 1086 EUR for you. It was a
| pleasure of doing business with you, sir.".
|
| And do the same with every other renegade, including
| reciprocal mirror tariffs and stuff. Want to play games?
| Let's play them together.
| mahkeiro wrote:
| Switzerland was part of Schengen from day one... New EU
| Entry exit/system will put CH in the same boat as UK with
| mandatory control at the border with scan of face and
| finger print + travel authorization. Switzerland would be
| completely locked. But some people are going to be happy
| as it would mean no more grocery shopping on the other
| side of the border.
| unbeli wrote:
| > Switzerland was part of Schengen from day one
|
| I say! That's news to most.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Switzerland officially joined the Schengen Area on
| December 12, 2008
|
| March 26, 1995 (The Implementation): The Schengen Area
| officially became effective on this date. Internal border
| controls were finally lifted among seven member states.
| transcriptase wrote:
| Makes far more sense than the "population must increase
| forever" pyramid scheme the rest of the West is running.
| Check out Canada for a look at what happens when you try to
| juice GDP via population growth at the expense of literally
| everything else.
| ryandrake wrote:
| What happens, specifically? Not that I'm a fan of
| "population increase forever" but what's wrong with
| Canada?
| alephnerd wrote:
| A lot of people on the internet blame Canada's malaise on
| their historically lax immigration stance.
|
| While to a certain extent it has caused some social
| issues (eg. Indian, Chinese, Viet organized crime took
| advantage of it to leave crackdowns during the 2010s and
| 2020s and degree mills abounded), it's impact on the
| economy is overstated.
|
| Canada's economy was always a resource extraction and
| construction driven economy, and
|
| 1. the blocking of the Keystone Pipeline project (thus
| making Canadian ONG less competitive than American
| sourced ONG for refineries)
|
| 2. the rise of America as a net energy producer and
| exporter especially in ONG (thanks Obama/Biden,
| Trump/Pence/Tillerson, and former Govs Burgum and Perry)
|
| 3. the blocking of the GasLink LNG project (blocked the
| ability for Canada to build marketshare in Asia)
|
| 4. the blocking of the Northern Gateway pipeline project
| (blocked the ability for Canada to build marketshare in
| Asia)
|
| 5. the blocking of the Energie Saguenay LNG project
| (blocked the ability for Canada to build marketshare in
| Europe)
|
| 6. Bipartisan support in America for trade barriers
| against Canada even before the Trump tarriffs (eg. Biden
| and Trump's softwood lumber tariff policy)
|
| 7. (becuase this failure is _bipartisan_ ) Blue provinces
| halting renewables projects in Alberta and Saskatchewan
| while American governors on both sides took full
| advantage of CHIPS and the IRA, thus preventing Canada
| from building domestic dealflow in GreenTech
|
| all played a much larger role than immigration in causing
| economic malaise for Canada.
|
| At the end of the day, Canada's economy in the 2010s was
| structurally unprepared for America becoming a major
| energy producer and exporter by the 2020s, and was unable
| to successfully build infra to make Canadian ONG cost
| competitive against American ONG _nor_ the ability to
| sell outside of North America.
|
| _THIS_ is the legacy of the Trudeau administration - if
| your economy is based on resource extraction, fighting
| _against_ it for political reasons is self-harming.
|
| Canada's GDP has essentially been stagnant for almost 15
| years, and all kinds of infrastructure projects that
| would have helped the Canadian economy grow were blocked.
| Additionally, Canada has the same economic complexity [0]
| as Bulgaria [1] and Serbia [2] and is even less complex
| than Mexico [3], which makes Canada the least competitive
| choice for FDI within NAFTA.
|
| Australia is in the exact same boat as Canada, but unlike
| Canada, their political class fully backed their resource
| extraction industries.
|
| [0] - https://atlas.hks.harvard.edu/countries/124/export-
| complexit...
|
| [1] - https://atlas.hks.harvard.edu/countries/100/export-
| complexit...
|
| [2] - https://atlas.hks.harvard.edu/countries/688/export-
| complexit...
|
| [3] - https://atlas.hks.harvard.edu/countries/484/export-
| complexit...
| kens wrote:
| Serious question: what is ONG? I assume it's like LNG
| (liquefied natural gas), but after multiple searches, all
| I can come up with is Oklahoma Natural Gas, NGO in
| French, and On God.
| alephnerd wrote:
| It's the abbreviation for Oil and Natural Gas sector.
| maxglute wrote:
| Pop increase faster than housing / good jobs. The usual.
| Tried to juice economy post covid with MASS Indian
| immigration, for reference peak "Chinese" immigration was
| post HK handover was 60k, settled at 40k per year, lots
| of Chinese wealth transfer to Canada. Indian immigration
| went from 60k per year to over 140k, outrageous amount.
| Bluntly, most of west including Canada gets second tier
| immigrants, all the good opportunities in US, Canada
| doesn't get to retain tier1 talent, and Indian immigrants
| are in aggregate less wealthy. The entire point of brain
| drain is to get best brains, or in lieu get wealth.
| Canada got neither. This not knock on Indian immigrants,
| who work just as hard as every other, just acknowledging
| value proposition is not the same.
|
| The broader context is Canada is on paper a small pop
| country with sufficiently alright governance to get per
| capita rich selling shit from ground. The more people you
| have have, the less that model works, and frankly Canada
| at 25m in the 00s already passed that point (vs 6m
| Norway). It doesn't help that... foreign influence have
| stagnated Canadian fossil/extractive industries
| development. Trudeau thought it was good idea to aim for
| 100m Canadians by 2100 (century initiative)... which on
| paper makes sense - only way for Canada to
| compete/influence vs US is heft, but of course that means
| a lot of brown and eventually black people fighting for
| housing and opportunities in the interregnum.
|
| Unsurprisingly, broken housing market = no one likes that
| interregnum.
| gambiting wrote:
| Population of most European countries is actually
| decreasing year on year:
|
| https://www.worldometers.info/population/countries-in-
| europe...
|
| But either way, European nations are nearly all screwed -
| their expenditure on pensions and healthcare will
| quadruple in the coming decades as the demographics
| change heavily towards elderly peple.
| bombcar wrote:
| Pensions are a bit harder to get out of, but healthcare
| is easy. You never deny, just delay.
| throwaway85825 wrote:
| Or in Canada, MAID.
| Stevvo wrote:
| The data/facts disagree with you. In a low birth rate
| society a constant influx of new tax payers is required.
| Without it you end up with decades of stagnation like
| Japan.
| transcriptase wrote:
| Why shouldn't the need for tax revenue go down as the
| population it's intended to serve declines?
| aprilthird2021 wrote:
| 2 main reasons
|
| 1) Populations are their most expensive at their oldest
| age and each subsequent generation is smaller and needs
| to pay for an old generation larger than their own
|
| 2) infrastructure and many of the things a government
| provides is not scalable down and up. A road is not
| (much) cheaper to maintain because less people drive on
| it
| metalman wrote:
| Here in Nova Scotia, Canada, mass imigration is driving
| the most intense building of everything boom, ever. And
| it just went up a notch. Plenty of Swiss imigrants as
| well.
| PowerElectronix wrote:
| No country is running a "population must increase
| forever". You only hear that when the public pensions are
| discussed because they are unsustainable. The argument is
| not " population must increase", it's more "human labor
| is the most critical resource and we must get as much as
| we can".
|
| You can fear the results of runaway immigration in the
| short term, like cultural clashes, organized crime and
| brown people in your neighborhood. But you can't deny the
| results on the long term when you allow talent to go to
| your country and end up with more nobel laureates of New
| Zealand origin than New Zealand.
| dnautics wrote:
| how did they ever survive in the pre-EU/schengen/EEC era?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Divorce is harder than a wedding.
| skywhopper wrote:
| Their neighbors were similarly restrictive back then, and
| the European economy was not as integrated.
| joe_mamba wrote:
| _> the European economy was not as integrated_
|
| And somehow despite this, the European economies had the
| biggest share of global GDP back then.
|
| And now they're more integrated than ever, have more
| immigration than ever, have created the EU as their "big
| daddy" leader and enforcer, and yet they can't stop
| losing share of GDP to the rest of the world. Stange.
| Maybe they should hit the brakes for a second and reflect
| that their current course of action isn't the cure but
| the disease.
|
| Like ASML, Concorde and Airbus were created via European
| cooperation when EU was a nascent baby and present day
| Schengen freedom of movement did not exist. Now we EU
| bureaucracy, open borders unlimited freedom of movement
| but haven't created the next Airbus or ASML. Food for
| thought that the EU is tackling the wrong issues on its
| economic stagnation. Maybe the solution is not more EU,
| but less EU.
| jltsiren wrote:
| The root issue was already visible in the 1970s. When
| birth rates drop below replacement, you eventually end up
| with a society with more old people than kids. And when
| you have a society like that, you naturally invest more
| in maintaining the society and less in building the
| future.
| j_maffe wrote:
| > Maybe the solution is not more EU, but less EU.
|
| You haven't given a single reason why that would be
| beneficial.
| fractallyte wrote:
| It's being proposed in order to maintain quality of life. No
| one wants to be overcrowded. This is a sane solution:
| collectively agree on the maximum tolerable population. Then
| it's down to individual responsibility to obey the norms of
| one's society.
|
| Edit: unless you're Swiss, your opinion is irrelevant. Swiss
| voters have a _right_ to decide how they want to live. They 're
| not beholden to EU laws; they can make their own sovereign
| decisions, and _everyone must respect that._
| shevy-java wrote:
| Except that it is not EU conform. And won't hold up anyway.
| Everyone knows this.
|
| Some politicians want to market themselves here.
|
| > Then it's down to individual responsibility to observe the
| norms of one's society.
|
| That's ok, but Switzerland decided to also partake in many EU
| regulations, including free movement. They can't cherry-pick
| individual parts. If they don't want special relations to the
| EU then that's also fine but the benefits will be gone as
| well. The UK found this out quite quickly too.
| SllX wrote:
| There's never anything sane with population caps by fiat. If
| that's a form of insanity they wish to indulge though, then
| democracy allows them that.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _There's never anything sane with population caps by
| fiat_
|
| Why? It's repressive if done to cap a natively-growing
| population, since that means government controlling
| reproduction (a la one-child policy). But government has
| controlled immigration for generations.
|
| I'm asking as someone who is genuinely on the fence on this
| vote.
| Johanx64 wrote:
| > Why? It's repressive if done to cap a natively-growing
| population, since that means government controlling
| reproduction (a la one-child policy).
|
| There's a point where caping even natively growing
| population is actually the right move.
|
| There's plenty of overpopulated shitholes (Mumbai, Dhaka,
| Cairo, Bangladesh, etc) where it would have been an
| absolute blessing if government was controlling
| reproduction or put a population cap in place.
|
| If you think capping population is wrong, go visit Dhaka,
| I highly recommend it.
|
| If you're still on the fence after visiting Dhaka, you're
| beyond saving.
| bootsmann wrote:
| Immigration is being controlled, EU immigrants require a
| work contract to come here (and consequentially 80% are
| employed with the rest split between spouses, kids and
| students). I strongly prefer this system over having some
| random bureaucrat in Berne decide who is "valuable" and
| who isn't.
| jrflowers wrote:
| If you increased Switzerland's population density by 50%
| they'd be in a crowded hellhole like (checks notes) Belgium
| ceejayoz wrote:
| There are significant differences in terrain that make that
| comparison a bit tougher.
| plqbfbv wrote:
| Yeah, but while Belgium is basically a huge plain,
| Switzerland is 60% Alps.
|
| If you account for that, the effective density of
| Switzerland on the usable area is 600-700 people/km2.
| jrflowers wrote:
| Looks like it's 380 in the Swiss Plateau (you might be
| mixing up sq km and sq mi), which puts its at about ~70%
| of the population density of the Netherlands as a whole.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_Plateau
| plqbfbv wrote:
| Fair, I had a quick look, 600-700 is likely for the big
| cities areas.
| rayiner wrote:
| But Belgium does suck. I drove from Amsterdam to Paris in
| the early 2000s, and Belgium stuck out as being obviously
| worse (dirtier) than the other two.
| incognito124 wrote:
| https://sive.rs/4d
| rayiner wrote:
| I was in Brussels and it sounds like it's still a
| problem. https://www.reddit.com/r/belgium/comments/1dsoy9
| y/why_is_it_...
| soco wrote:
| I think I'm totally missing the explanation how my quality of
| life will increase when Swiss products cannot be sold in the
| EU anymore because of the price hikes and double bureaucracy
| - including no more cross-border work. Job loss doesn't say
| much "quality of life", nor does higher prices on imports.
| herbst wrote:
| What products are you thinking? Chocolate and cheese are
| actually not that relevant as some people want it to be.
| Gold trade, software, banking however is unlikely to
| decrease a lot no matter the border rules.
| Argonaut998 wrote:
| You are assuming there won't be free trade agreements.
| People need to stop saying what happened with Brexit will
| happen with Switzerland. Two completely different countries
| governed in two completely different ways.
| asyx wrote:
| The EU would be really stupid to give you a good deal.
| Like, for self preservation purposes alone it would be
| really beneficial if Switzerland would just really suffer
| after leaving the EEA especially because a lot of shit
| was going down in Europe and the world after brexit.
| Can't really point at the cost of living in the uk and
| say that's brexit when petrol is almost 2EUR in Germany
| as well.
|
| But a Switzerland that just collapses surely but surely?
| That's gonna send a message.
| FabCH wrote:
| Well I _am_ Swiss.
|
| You missed the part where we _voluntarily_ chose to enter
| into a contract with the EU that does in fact beholden us to
| EU laws.
|
| We can go back on that contract, but breaking your word is
| something that people remember for a reason.
| criddell wrote:
| Does the contract contain a section on breaking the
| agreement?
| FabCH wrote:
| Yes.
|
| And that clause famously includes the breaking of all
| other contracts.
| brewdad wrote:
| If it doesn't, a whole lot of European lawyers need to
| turn in their licenses.
| BoingBoomTschak wrote:
| Maybe not a legally smart move, but morally... when was it
| signed? Perhaps way before some EU countries decided to
| stop enforcing their borders beyond the performative level?
| And since these agreements basically force countries
| (especially rich countries with socialist systems) to
| somewhat share the burden of that choice they didn't make,
| I don't blame them in the least.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _unless you 're Swiss, your opinion is irrelevant_
|
| I vote in Switzerland. I'm very much interested in the
| thoughts and opinions of others on this vote.
| skywhopper wrote:
| It's ludicrous to think that 10 million is the "maximum
| tolerable population" for Switzerland. This is a racist,
| isolationist move and an attempt to stir up hatred among the
| population.
| dweinus wrote:
| > unless you're Swiss, your opinion is irrelevant
|
| Lol. Dude, sure the Swiss can vote however they want. But we
| all see you and can pass judgement on this thinly veiled
| anti-immigrant nonsense all day long. Respect it I will
| never.
| shevy-java wrote:
| The people behind this are conservative politicians. They have
| done so a lot in the last 20 years or so and keep on trying,
| but the EU regularly stops their shenanigans.
|
| For the most part the swiss already decided to try to cherry
| pick as much as possible. They know that if they want to limit
| movement, then the EU will also limit movement from swiss to
| other EU countries. And the swiss always disliked that, so they
| could not go through with it. You can also see that with the UK
| - they are out of the EU but suddenly want free movement and
| free trade. Some people can't decide what they want.
| jon_adler wrote:
| With a birth rate or 1.29, they will need to accept immigrants
| or face the consequences of a declining population. My guess is
| that in the end, the next generation of old folk will want
| taking care of.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _With a birth rate or 1.29, they will need to accept
| immigrants or face the consequences of a declining
| population_
|
| Doesn't the population cap somewhat elegantly deal with this?
| If birth rates are insufficient, a certain amount of
| migration is tolerated. The lower births rates go, the more
| immigration is allowed.
| harshalizee wrote:
| It doesn't work as straightforward as that. To have a
| healthy immigration channel, especially if you want
| younger/educated/skilled/etc. the pipeline needs to be
| active and streamlined. Jobs, housing, a well-beaten path
| that is predictably navigable is incredibly important for a
| migrant, since they're taking a lot of risks moving there.
|
| If this referendum blocks EU movement, it will choke the
| pipeline that's filling positions that takes in a high
| amount of immigrants like healthcare, agriculture, etc.
| Once it dies out, people may not be as willing to move if
| they're the one paving the path.
|
| Historically, the US has been quite successful in this
| area. Migrants from Philippines dominate nursing, Mexico
| for agriculture and Chinese/Indians for Sotware/Medical.
|
| The migration path has to be vastly superior to their
| current living for this to work, if they want the same
| immigration. Or else, it will be mostly people who are
| truly in a terrible situation who'd be willing to take a
| chance.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Counterpoint: Switzerland is rich, peaceful and pretty
| multicultural. That baseline will keep it as an
| attractive place to expat or migrate.
| harshalizee wrote:
| Counter-conterpoint : For now.
|
| A large part of this is due to bilateral agreements and
| free flow migration. This referendum directly affects
| that.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| Robots will take off in our life time. I will be taken care
| of by robots circa the 2060s and 2070s.
| vitalyan1234 wrote:
| will soemone please think of the boomers? :(
| plqbfbv wrote:
| Moved out last year after 10y in the Zurich area.
|
| There's always been a pull-and-push between getting skilled
| workers and protecting the internal labor market. Right-wing
| political parties never made a secret of the fact that they
| hated immigrants, because they stole jobs and
| redirected/exported money that would have otherwise been
| received by Swiss. IIRC this was historically mostly felt in
| Ticino (the southern region), where Swiss companies sourced
| very cheap Italian labor by undercutting Swiss salaries by a
| lot, shrinking the job market for Swiss people (a Swiss can
| barely get by in Switzerland with an equivalent Italian
| salary).
|
| Switzerland is geographically in the middle of Europe, but it's
| not part of the EU. This allowed the country to thrive outside
| some of the more restrictive EU regulations and keep its own
| currency, but because it has a smaller job market that can
| barely replenish the high-skilled workers pool and is often in
| defect (not just finance bros, but also doctors, for instance),
| it always had to import workforce from neighboring countries to
| some extent. Over the last 40 years Switzerland basically
| opened up to more-or-less follow many EU rules and put in place
| agreements to have a play in the same market and be allowed to
| easily keep importing people it needs.
|
| This initiative as I understand it would be equivalent to a
| Brexit (because sooner or later the cap would be hit,
| considering more housing keeps being built), which would undo
| 40 years of openings and IMO greatly weaken the integration
| with EU, and as a result the country as a whole.
| atemerev wrote:
| This is a way to enable deportations and curb permit
| prolongations, to delay reaching the 10m cap (which will create
| really bad consequences).
|
| As an immigrant in Switzerland, I am quite WORRIED.
| unbrice wrote:
| > As an immigrant in Switzerland, I am quite WORRIED.
|
| If it helps : Assuming that the initiative pass and nothing
| is done to reduce the immigration rate, the 10M threshold
| would be reached by 2040 according to the Federal Statistics
| Office. The current regime should apply to you till 2042
| which should give you 16 years to make your way to
| citizenship (Among many other path that would let you stay).
| shevy-java wrote:
| Great that they can vote, but this is also stupid. Plus, it works
| both ways, so if Switzerland wants to add a cap to limit movement
| then it won't be able to enjoy free movement in the EU either. I
| totally understand why Norway and Switzerland do not want to join
| the EU; the EU has tons of problems, but this kind of cherry-
| picking is simply unfair to the other EU members. (Also, the EU
| has to stop expanding. It constantly picks up poor countries, and
| demands that the richer EU countries must now pay more than
| before. This is also totally unfair.)
| mrazomor wrote:
| It's not about free movement, but "free trade"/joint market.
|
| Having rich countries support its poor neighbors is an
| ingenious solution to improving your quality of life. You
| impose your rules, regulations and monetary policy, they get
| capital for internal improvements. If there's no huge waste or
| theft (which sadly exists), you end up with wide, strong and
| stable continent-level middle class. Which is great goal, as we
| can see when observing Switzerland -- wide, strong and stable
| country-level middle class.
|
| Last time Switzerland attempted something like this (~10y ago),
| it got burnt, hard (lost a lot of EU related projects and
| academic financing). Cutting the economical/market ties with
| the EU, considering its position and dependencies, is a
| suicide.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _It 's not about free movement, but "free trade"/joint
| market_
|
| This is entirely about free movement and immigration.
| mrazomor wrote:
| I wasn't precise enough, my bad. I was referring to the
| comment about which says that by Switzerland restricting
| the moves from EU, loses the free movement to EU. My
| comment says that this is less of an issue -- the real
| issue comes from the market restrictions that EU will
| install against Switzerland.
| snowpid wrote:
| The EU expansion politics was a success. E.g. Poland was a
| great industry place for cheap labour, now it becomes a richer
| economy, they consume more expensive from Germany and France.
| surgical_fire wrote:
| "constantly"
|
| What the EU needs to get rid of is of the veto power. Otherwise
| I welcome our neighbors to the east as long as they are willing
| to play by the rules.
| ouk wrote:
| This initiative is a trap. Essentially, it would allow for the
| termination of bilateral agreements with Europe. This is what the
| SVP has been trying to do for decades, and this initiative
| provides them with a convenient excuse. And it's particularly
| ironic because the SVP has always opposed legislation promoting
| sustainability.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _This initiative is a trap. Essentially, it would allow for
| the termination of bilateral agreements with Europe_
|
| Or their preemptive re-negotiation.
|
| I'm not sure describing it as a trap is fair. Nobody voting on
| is confused about what the thresholds require. I'm not thrilled
| at how close they both are. But the fundamental idea of a
| maximum sustainable population for an Alpine republic isn't
| abhorrent to me.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| is the idea of economic destruction akin to what the UK has
| suffered abhorrent to you? In your excitement about the one
| you might consider the other.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _the idea of economic destruction akin to what the UK has
| suffered abhorrent to you?_
|
| Yes. But I don't think Brexit is comparable to what is
| being proposed here.
|
| In Brexit, the UK invoked Article 50. In this case, the EU
| would have to execute its Guillotine clause. That
| dramatically changes the framework for and thus possibility
| of renegotiations.
| mrtksn wrote:
| There's not going to be negotiations to drop the core
| principles, I don't know why bunch of people keep
| imagining this. UK was let go, Switzerland will be let go
| too.
|
| Hoping different outcome by negotiation over this is like
| hoping for negotiating your way out of your gym
| membership payment when still attending. Not going to
| happen unless you become a charity case or insignificant,
| being significant is not a strength its a weakness when
| you are looking for charity or special treatment.
| Switzerland can imagine being too important to loose just
| as UK thought and they will be let go as UK.
|
| I guess leaving EU can be useful to those who want to do
| things to Switzerland just like they did things to UK.
| selfmodruntime wrote:
| How exactly are the Swiss in any position that would mean
| economic destruction?
| mrtksn wrote:
| They are in a position of having no seas and only EU on
| every side, which means things are getting more
| bureaucratic the more EU-Swiss relationship sours. Think
| border checks on the ground and flight restrictions in
| the air and the less than 10M rich people in the
| mountains can now trade only among themselves.
| soco wrote:
| I must wonder though who could profit from Switzerland leaving
| Schengen. Okay pass checks are only a little hassle, but visas
| can become bigger, and judicial cooperation on international
| crime just drops. And yes, no more cross-border workers either
| way.
| joe_mamba wrote:
| _> I must wonder though who could profit from Switzerland
| leaving Schengen._
|
| Same types of people who profited from Brexit.
| holowoodman wrote:
| > And yes, no more cross-border workers either way.
|
| Well, that will be a problem especially for Swiss industry.
| Tons of workers from neighboring Italy, France, Germany and
| Austria work in Switzerland, commuting each day. They do this
| because workers are paid better in Switzerland than in
| neighboring countries. If those workers aren't available
| anymore, Swiss production of all kinds of stuff will take a
| huge hit.
|
| For the same reason of wage differences, not a lot of Swiss
| people cross the border for work, and all neighbors are
| larger (except of course Liechtenstein, but that's a very
| special case anyways). So for those neighboring countries, it
| isn't that much of a problem.
| netsharc wrote:
| Too many people confuse Schengen and EU freedom of movement.
| Ireland isn't in Schengen, but any EU citizen is allowed to
| enter the country, find work and reside...
| chinathrow wrote:
| Meanwhile SVP head politicians employ quite a few foreign
| workers at all levels of employment hierarchy.
|
| It's pathetic.
| greggoB wrote:
| > And it's particularly ironic because the SVP has always
| opposed legislation promoting sustainability.
|
| I was just telling someone this today! _Very_ business-friendly
| party, with the exception of immigration policy, ofc.
| namuol wrote:
| Convenient how? Even if you take the spin at face value, it's
| downright dystopian.
| jl6 wrote:
| It would be saner to set a cap that is in some way tied to
| ecological footprint, food production, energy generation
| capacity, and other factors that make a country sustainable and
| sovereign. Trouble is, I expect that would put nearly every
| country way over.
| herbst wrote:
| It is in fact based on stuff like this but hyperboled into a
| placative number. The "9.142 million initiative" would sell
| just as good.
| _air wrote:
| Switzerland is ranked 67th in country population density. For
| reference, the United Kingdom is ranked 48th and the United
| States is ranked 183rd.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependen...
| MattDamonSpace wrote:
| America is soooo big and soooo sparsely populated
| Octoth0rpe wrote:
| I wonder if that number can be adjusted based on the amount of
| arable land, or based on the ease of construction (quite the
| nebulous term here admittedly). The number of mountains
| presumably makes this hard to compare.
| deepspace wrote:
| That is an utterly meaningless statistic. Canada, with four
| times the population, ranks #233, because most of the country
| is uninhabited / uninhabitable.
| soco wrote:
| > That is an utterly meaningless statistic
|
| It's very meaningful, when the main argument is population
| overcrowding.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Read the rest of the post.
| Argonaut998 wrote:
| The entire human population can fit within Los Angelas.
| It's not a good metric in general. Pressure on public
| services, resources and housing is far more useful
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| Population weighted density is a better metric for this use
| case. It's more stable than population density when adding
| large areas of sparsely populated land, because the denser,
| more highly populated areas are more heavily weighted. It
| shows, roughly, the density experienced locally by the
| average person in some region.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_weighted_density
|
| The problem is it's difficult to compare across polities
| because nobody will agree on the right granularity of parcel
| size to use (and indeed, it is not really obvious what the
| right granularity is, and choice of parcel size can
| drastically change the number).
|
| It's similar to the metrics of "average class size" vs.
| "student-weighted class size".
| https://allenschwenk.wordpress.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2023/0...
| sashank_1509 wrote:
| India is 31, Netherlands is more dense than India. Would not
| have expected that, but then I remember that India has a
| massive desert, and the Himalayas. So I guess it makes more
| sense now.
| arjie wrote:
| This is such a fascinating referendum. The population is at 9.1m,
| and at 9.5m it appears they'll stall asylum and family
| reunification, and at 10m they'll execute a Swexit - Switzerland
| isn't in the EU but it allows freedom of movement to EU
| nationals. Boy it is interesting to see what's going on in the
| world right now. There were so many things that I saw growing up
| as relatively solid but I just happened to grow up in an era of
| European unity and American primacy. I thought that even Brexit
| was a one-off event, but perhaps it is the other way around and
| European unity is a temporary thing that fragments easily. An
| interesting age, in the Austen Chamberlain sense.
| seydor wrote:
| damn, the word 'execute' reverberated interestingly
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _execute a Swexit_
|
| It wouldn't be full Chexit. Just renegotiating and then
| rejecting the Schengen chapter. It would then be up to the EU
| to execute its Guillotine clause.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Sure, and I didn't shoot you, I just sent a bullet in your
| direction.
| tonfa wrote:
| Especially after we saw how happy the EU was to negotiate
| (they didn't budge) when https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014
| _Swiss_immigration_initiat... passed.
|
| The new initiative is basically the same, but with no
| leeway to ignore it.
|
| (that said I suspect if it passes, there will be something
| tied to the bilateral referendum in 2027/28 to try to
| supersede it)
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _if it passes, there will be something tied to the
| bilateral referendum in 2027 /28 to try to supersede it_
|
| This is my thinking, too. If it really comes down to
| Chexit-or-nothing, we'll have another referendum.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| That was the UK's thinking, too. "We won't have a hard
| Brexit! Of _course_ they 'll negotiate a plan!"
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| And then the UK delivered an Article 50 notice. That
| isn't something this referendum would force.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| The UK's referendum was also non-binding, in theory.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _UK 's referendum was also non-binding, in theory_
|
| If SVP gets control of government they'll probably try to
| Chexit irrespective of any referendum power. That's
| orthogonal to this question.
| tonfa wrote:
| Well there's anyway going to be a referendum about the
| bilateral. (which is why I find the initiative somewhat
| stupid, you can vote on the real deal in a few years,
| about whether people want or do not want to have
| agreements with the EU, instead of hiding it behind a
| fake/emotional reason)
| ericmay wrote:
| > It would then be up to the EU to execute its Guillotine
| clause.
|
| These kinds of morally-superior, we'll show them, type of
| attitudes and suggestions are precisely why so many folks
| have come to be anti-EU. Nevermind the actual other real day-
| to-day issues with the organization.
|
| I'm sure you're also staunchly against Scotland and any
| referendum to join the EU, and against Catalonia becoming
| independent as well? Why should Taiwan be an exception and
| not part of China? Seems many of the EU are of the opinion
| that "We support sovereignty when it conveniently aligns with
| my chosen organization".
|
| The default and perhaps what is best for democracy is to have
| many smaller nation states, city states, and the other
| various confederations and the like. The super-organization
| of nations into these unwieldy states is in many respects
| anti-democratic and perhaps only temporary as these large
| nations and alliances were built precisely to fight other,
| large nation states.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _sure you 're also staunchly against Scotland and any
| referendum to join the EU, and against Catalonia becoming
| independent as well?_
|
| Why? I think the first is a good idea and the second fine
| if that's what they want.
| ericmay wrote:
| Because those would be breaking up the unions of those
| countries. It's no different morally or philosophically
| from Switzerland leaving the EU.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Say what? Switzerland isn't _in_ the EU, how can it
| leave?
|
| It has treaties, but not membership. That doesn't make it
| "leaving" if they annul the treaties.
| ericmay wrote:
| This was the OP:
|
| > It wouldn't be full Chexit. Just renegotiating and then
| rejecting the Schengen chapter. It would then be up to
| the EU to execute its Guillotine clause.
|
| My terminology was matching what was used here.
| phoronixrly wrote:
| You are mistaken. I am pro-Scotland independence and EU
| admission but anti Catalonia independence. Simply because
| the former will expand and strengthen the EU and the latter
| will divide and weaken it, especially since it's supported
| by Russia.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >These kinds of morally-superior, we'll show them, type of
| attitudes
|
| This is a strange framing that itself usually comes from a
| standpoint of moral superiority. When you sign agreements
| with a governing body, like the EU on freedom of movement,
| and you break that agreement then there's consequences. And
| I don't mean that in an underhanded agressive way, but just
| literally you've broken the terms you had negotiated.
|
| The superiority complex really often seems to come from
| countries like Switzerland or the UK in the Brexit
| situation. Countries that already have often privileged
| deals and then decide to forfeit them, which they are
| allowed to do, it's not an attack on their sovereignty, the
| EU is not mainland China and Switzerland or the UK were not
| Taiwan, they're free to do what they want, they just can't
| have their cake and eat it too.
| ericmay wrote:
| > This is a strange framing that itself usually comes
| from a standpoint of moral superiority. When you sign
| agreements with a governing body, like the EU on freedom
| of movement, and you break that agreement then there's
| consequences. And I don't mean that in an underhanded
| agressive way, but just literally you've broken the terms
| you had negotiated.
|
| I don't think so. Even in the case where the Swiss or UK
| are breaking agreements or demanding changes to those
| agreements, it isn't something that's uncommon as
| countries and nations and companies and all sorts of
| entities break or renegotiate agreements or contracts all
| the time. In the case of Switzerland let's say they no
| longer feel the EU's freedom of movement policy works
| with the existing agreement because the EU has failed to
| protect its borders. You're painting a breaking of the
| agreement in the sense that nothing has changed in the
| agreement, but that may not be true and so breaking the
| agreement by the Swiss would have actually been because
| of a break in the agreement by the EU.
|
| These interactions taking place and then now all of a
| sudden the Swiss are to be the recipient of some
| draconian action "we'll show them" is not really that
| strange given it's relatively straightforward to see how
| these two entities can reasonable come to a disagreement
| which may or may not resolve itself.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >it isn't something that's uncommon as countries and
| nations and companies and all sorts of entities break or
| renegotiate agreements or contracts all the time.
|
| what the Swiss are trying to do here is very uncommon, in
| fact it's so uncommon _literally nobody has ever done it
| before_. No country in history has imposed a numerical
| population cap on its population, and in addition,
| freedom of movement isn 't a detail. It's the very core
| of the Treaty of Rome and the Schengen agreement that
| Switzerland is part of. That Europeans can now move
| freely between countries is _the_ bedrock achievement of
| virtually all its labored for.
|
| And the EU is not going to do braconian measures, the EU
| does not bully its smaller neighbors. Britain wasn't
| intimated, threatened and nobody tried to interfere with
| it when they wanted to leave. THey decided to do so and
| did. Swizterland can cap its population and deny freedom
| of movement, nobody's going to bully them, but they're
| obviously not going to have the relationship they had
| with the EU.
|
| To even rhetorically compare the EU to the US (which has
| threatened to annex an ally's territory) or China (which
| throws minorities into camps and threatens a democracy
| with force) is pretty damn absurd. Ask Taiwan if they
| want to trade places with Switzerland on the world map if
| they could.
| ericmay wrote:
| > what the Swiss are trying to do here is very uncommon,
| in fact it's so uncommon literally nobody has ever done
| it before. No country in history has imposed a numerical
| population cap on its population, and in addition,
| freedom of movement isn't a detail. It's the very core of
| the Treaty of Rome and the Schengen agreement that
| Switzerland is part of. That Europeans can now move
| freely between countries is the bedrock achievement of
| virtually all its labored for.
|
| I think you are putting this referendum on a pedestal it
| doesn't need to go on. All countries control population
| to some extent, whether that's in how they support
| parental leave or how they support mothers, or through
| immigration control, quotas, points systems, &c.
| Switzerland is just adding in another wrinkle. Plus all
| legislation was at one point new.
| jltsiren wrote:
| Those "guillotine clauses" mostly exist because member
| states didn't want to cede their sovereignty to the EU. If
| a treaty covers areas where member states have shared or
| full responsibility, it must be ratified unanimously by
| every member state. (Which in some case requires
| ratification by regional parliaments.) Any changes to such
| treaties must also be ratified, which means there will be
| 30+ parties negotiating and trying to win new concessions.
| Aarchive wrote:
| It's the opposite of what you think, if some countries get
| privileges without following the basic principles, then the
| EU would be unpopular.
| mahkeiro wrote:
| Schengen is not the free movement clause... sad to see people
| that don't even know the difference (free movement existed
| before Schengen).
| cromka wrote:
| It's crazy how people really don't get the difference
| between free movement and Schengen.
| cromka wrote:
| It's not Schengen. It's Free Movement, the core principle of
| EEA. You're not in EEA, you don't get free access to EU
| market.
|
| This would be catastrophic to Swiss economy.
| mc32 wrote:
| It veers too close to Logan's Run when they cap things like
| that. I'm sure it's just policy action at the various
| thresholds but it sure sounds odd.
| foobarian wrote:
| Elderly people in our village in east Europe used to be super
| suspicious of the EU project and would say that European
| countries get along like "a sack of horns." Hopefully they were
| wrong :-)
| joe_mamba wrote:
| _> would say that European countries get along like "a sack
| of horns."_
|
| True words of wisdom.
|
| _> Hopefully they were wrong :-)_
|
| They weren't. EU membership and cooperation is built on
| favoritism and necessity. You get into the EU if you have
| something of value the other members need from you (capital,
| geopolitical, industrial, human or natural resources) done
| via treaties instead of via war and conquest.
|
| So it ended up as a toxic relationship where members exploit
| each other to get as much as they can while contributing as
| little as they can.
|
| @Ukraine, you'll experience this when you get your turn, just
| ask Romania.
| throw-the-towel wrote:
| But what did Romania experience?
| joe_mamba wrote:
| Banks, energy, telecom, defence, oil & gas companies had
| to be sold to French, German and Austrian companies for
| below market value, so those countries would lift their
| veto.
|
| Same with joining NATO TBF. We had to buy some overpriced
| shoddy used F-16 from the US with a lot of miles on the
| clock, for the same price of brand new Swedish Gripens
| just so the US would accepts us in NATO.
|
| So if history does indeed repeat itself, Ukraine will
| also have to sell off vital industry and resources to
| major EU corporations to get in. Like all those new shiny
| drone startups they have. Safe to assume Rheinmetall or
| Dassault will want those under German/French flag before
| Ukraine is allowed in the EU. Same with oil, gas and rare
| earths.
|
| Basically EU and NATO are two tier institutions. First
| there's the whales, the big players who are founders and
| make the rules, or get invited to join, and then there's
| the scrappy low level players, who need to beg and offer
| monetary dowry to be allowed to join. In theory everyone
| is equal, except some dogs are more equal than others.
|
| Because everything in the world is transactional pay-to-
| win. There's no charity and no handouts. If you're being
| invited somewhere or given something, it's because
| something from you is expected in exchange.
|
| @throwaway85825 Yes, except that was non negotiable form
| the US side. "You buy our overpriced junk or take a hike,
| I don't care if your poor country can't afford it."
| Leaked cables between our leaders at the time.
|
| Also food for thought to MAGA who keeps thinking that US
| acted like a charity for NATO.
| throwaway85825 wrote:
| Purchase price in jet deals is never straightforward
| because every deal is different. Variables could include:
| training (school + flight hours), weapons, contracted
| maintenance, spares, airfield infrastructure upgrades,
| engine overhaul etc. The only real way to compare is cost
| per flight hour.
| dh2022 wrote:
| Romanian banks were looted by Romanians in the 90s: see
| Paunesu brothers and BRD. Also see Dacia Felix bank,
| Bancorex.
|
| Romanian telecom: post communist crash Romanian
| telecommunications were a disaster. For example two
| different phone numbers shared the same line (a.k.a.
| Cuplajul). In late 90s some western telecom companies
| started investing in Romanian cellular networks- they
| built all the tower and network infrastructure. I do not
| understand what you mean when you say the west stole
| telecoms from Romanian - the west actually built it.
|
| Energy, oil and gas- the heydays of Romanian oil
| producing days were during the WWII when Romania supplied
| a lot of the oil used by the Germans. After that Russians
| took whatever was left over because of war reparations.
| Since I can remember Romania did not produce oil - it was
| dependent on Russian imports during communism for
| example. So there was no oil and gas for the West to
| steal either.
|
| Re: NATO - in the 90s and early 2000sn Romania wanted to
| join NATO because that particular generation remembered
| the Russian all too well. The priceRomania paid was
| enforcing the embargo on the Serbs during the Kosovo and
| Bosnian wars.
|
| Re: F16 - romanians are flying some hand me downs from
| Holland which were purchased at the dizzying price of 1
| euro.
|
| I am sorry, but you sound like a Romanian nationalist,
| one who unfortunately is convincing enough do that the
| current generation does not know how much better their
| lives are because of EU and NATO. But who knows, maybe
| they will get a chance to find out...
|
| [edit - some typos]
| boelboel wrote:
| Sometimes members are added just to prevent the EU from
| working better together, the reason why UK pushed hardest
| for expansion in 2004/2007. Funny how they'd leave the EU a
| few years later because of a vote that might've been
| decided becsuse of the 'polish plumber'.
| didgetmaster wrote:
| >Hopefully they were wrong.
|
| Over a thousand years of history has shown that they were
| right.
| selfmodruntime wrote:
| The EU is effectively paralysed in foreign affairs and a
| common fighter jet project died just today due to economic
| infighting. They're right.
| laughing_man wrote:
| Seriously? This keeps happening over and over.
| rayiner wrote:
| Calling it a population cap for something that seems to be
| about stricter border controls is a _wild_ marketing choice.
| bootsmann wrote:
| It is a population cap, you can read this proposal its like 5
| lines of text.
| gmac wrote:
| No, it's an immigration restriction. There's no way it
| applies if the Swiss start having 5 kids each.
| stymaar wrote:
| It's a migration cap. There's no provision on sterilizing
| Swiss women should the threshold be reached through
| birthrate...
| usefulcat wrote:
| If Swiss population growth were entirely attributable to
| the children of existing Swiss residents, then this
| initiative would be pointless because it wouldn't change
| anything, and we would not be having this conversation.
|
| So yes, it absolutely is about immigration, regardless of
| the wording.
| panick21_ wrote:
| Apparently you are unable to understand that if people who
| have been crying about immigration for 20 years that now
| push this things does not mean they have changed their
| mind. They just try to hide what's obvious to confuse
| uniformed voters (like old people who just see big number
| and remember the 1970s).
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| That avoids accusations of bigotry which Europe has convinced
| itself doesn't exist within its domains.
| kgwxd wrote:
| Border control is not equivalent to racism. The people
| pushing for it loudly just tend to be doing it for
| blatantly racist reasons. Unsurprisingly, those people tend
| to abuse any ounce of power given to them. When they're
| granted extraordinary government powers, they make up
| official sounding reason to achieve their racist agenda.
| Hence the general consensus that any talk of border control
| is racism. The non-racist-driven border control agenda just
| controls the border, and shut the fuck up about it. They
| don't boast about arrests, they don't make up stories about
| crime or eating cats and dogs, they don't send in the
| military to schools to grab kids out of class, they don't
| shoot people in the face when they look at them wrong.
| rayiner wrote:
| You think people who support border controls are simply
| prejudiced based on skin color? Like, their problem with
| Little Mogadishu or Little Bangladesh is that people in
| those places don't need sunscreen? Do you think that, if
| Ilhan Omar was Albanian, people would love her?
| themanmaran wrote:
| That's literally not what he said. He's saying the
| majority of people supporting border controls are not
| racist, but the vocal minority are the ones who "boast
| about arrests" / "make up stories about crime or eating
| cats and dogs"
| autoexec wrote:
| Exactly. This is one of those "not everyone who cares
| about border controls are racist, but most racists care a
| lot about border controls" situations
| selimthegrim wrote:
| >Do you think that, if Ilhan Omar was Albanian, people
| would love her?
|
| You do realize who a great deal of the "southern
| Italians" in certain parts of New York and New Orleans
| actually are, right? Or is your point solely about
| religion?
| rayiner wrote:
| They're Albanians?
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Yes, by extraction (Arbereshe), although they are
| Catholic and speak Italian.
| rayiner wrote:
| TIL.
| p1necone wrote:
| This seems like a sarcastic/unserious comment, but based
| on my interactions with people who are supposedly anti-
| immigration - yes, it's entirely based on skin colour.
|
| Someone from India, China etc whose family immigrated in
| the 1800s to work in gold mines/railroads etc and
| probably has deeper roots in the country than the person
| criticising them = immigrant, bad, shouldn't be here.
| Somehow simultaneously taking all the jobs _and_ living
| off the state and not contributing.
|
| Someone from Europe/America/Canada with white skin who
| either came here as a child or was born here to immigrant
| parents = not a problem at all, they "don't count" for
| some reason.
| rayiner wrote:
| I agree the people who lump children of Chinese railroad
| workers in with illegal immigrants are racist. But it's
| the pro-immigration folks that do that pervasively, under
| the label "people of color." Meanwhile, you have to look
| at pretty fringy parts of the right to find that.
| istjohn wrote:
| Fringy parts like the POTUS?
| rayiner wrote:
| Show me where Trump wants to deport descendants of
| Chinese railroad workers? Heck, he'd give half of China
| H1B visas if it were up to him.
| genxy wrote:
| Why do you continually put words in people's mouths? The
| rhetorical style you use could use some improvement.
|
| Why are so many of your comments about race or religion?
| oytis wrote:
| I believe people migrating to Switzerland are largely
| educated Europeans, so population density must be their
| biggest concern about migration
| crazygringo wrote:
| It's actually kind of genius.
|
| It implicitly reframes a debate about immigration, to a
| debate about ecology/sustainability.
|
| Like I'm not defending it or saying it's honest. But as a
| marketing jiujitsu move, it's actually impressively creative.
| autoexec wrote:
| I think that immigration actually is an
| ecology/sustainability issue. There are economic and
| cultural effects to immigration as well, and that's what
| people tend to focus on, but they aren't the only issues to
| consider. I think every country that has their shit
| together should be giving serious thought to immigration
| and sustainability, especially knowing that a massive
| number of climate refugees are coming in the near future.
| Preparing for that now would go a long way to keeping
| quality of life up while still helping out.
|
| This specific policy may not be well intentioned, it may
| even be a means to avoid taking in those refugees when the
| time comes, but this is the kind of thing that nations
| should be thinking about right now.
| hocuspocus wrote:
| To be fair that's not specific to SVP's populist initiatives,
| the parliament pushes bills with nonsensical names all the
| time.
| cromka wrote:
| Need to hold them liable to one child per household policy
| if, for some reason, Swiss start having a little bit more sex
| and bit more children.
| autoexec wrote:
| You don't have to jump right to one child per household
| (which is a bad idea anyway) but maintaining sustainable
| population levels should extend beyond just border control.
| It should include things like building out infrastructure
| in underdeveloped areas and encouraging (or perhaps even
| requiring) people to move in the new spaces, enabling and
| encouraging remote work to free up unnecessary office space
| and concentration of workers to city centers, and the
| promotion of sex ed, family planning, and birth control so
| that the children being born are going to parents who want
| and are ready for them.
| philipallstar wrote:
| > There were so many things that I saw growing up as relatively
| solid but I just happened to grow up in an era of European
| unity and American primacy
|
| European unity works well in a world of mostly-stable
| populations. Having mass migrations from large, relatively
| empty countries, to pretty full ones, is going to make the full
| ones increasingly expensive to make housing for, to power, and
| to water.
| kaufmae wrote:
| most of the immigrants are highly educated professionals, big
| tech, pharma and meds. it's not the ,,empty".
| throw-the-towel wrote:
| Can you back up your claims? I don't have a dog in this
| fight, but do notice people ridiculing migrants as "doctors
| and engineers".
| tempay wrote:
| As with everything it's complicated but it's more true
| than not:
|
| https://nccr-onthemove.ch/indicators/how-qualified-are-
| migra...
|
| More importantly, education isn't everything. Half the
| economy runs on work that doesn't need higher education
| and that locals largely won't do: cleaning, care,
| hospitality, construction. The Spanish and Portuguese
| speaking workers doing those jobs are propping up a
| standard of living for everyone.
| throwaway85825 wrote:
| Won't do or won't do for slave wages?
| tempay wrote:
| I can't comment outside of Geneva but it's hardly "slave
| wages":
|
| * https://www.mission-geneve.dfae.admin.ch/en/manual-
| labour-mi...
|
| * (scroll to the cost breakdown)
| https://batmaid.ch/en/about-us
| throwaway85825 wrote:
| A better definition of slave wages is:
|
| After food, shelter and necessities is there something
| left over? Lately consuner spending is increasingly debt
| indicating that its not break even.
| tempay wrote:
| > consuner spending is increasingly debt
|
| Geneva has the highest minimum wage in the world
| precisely to try and avoid the "working poor".
|
| Also the "consuner spending is increasingly debt" is very
| US centric view. The situation in Europe is less extreme
| and totally absent in many countries.
| throwaway85825 wrote:
| >locals largely won't do
|
| This is never true and just economic denialism. There is
| a market price for labor. If there is no supply at a
| given price it is not evidence that a market does not
| exist, only that the demand is mispriced.
| jjk166 wrote:
| > This is never true and just economic denialism. There
| is a market price for labor. If there is no supply at a
| given price it is not evidence that a market does not
| exist, only that the demand is mispriced.
|
| There can be situations where the market for a particular
| type of labor does not exist. Populations aren't
| infinite, and if there are enough good paying, desirable
| jobs for full employment, then there may be no one
| available to do a job economically.
|
| For example let's imagine a hypothetical town where only
| residents of the town are allowed to work in the town,
| though they can provide services to those outside of the
| town. Let's say 100 people live in this town, and they
| are all doctors. There is a hospital in this town that
| needs 100 doctors to run. There are other jobs to be done
| in this town - someone needs to pick up trash, someone
| needs to mow lawns, someone needs to sell food, etc. Now
| if you pay someone a doctor's salary to pick up trash,
| they could potentially leave the hospital to do that job
| instead; but then the hospital is understaffed. Something
| isn't going to get done; indeed in this scenario where
| there are a lot more jobs to be done than people to do
| them, a lot of stuff isn't going to get done, no matter
| how good the pay is, and the jobs that are done will be
| insanely expensive.
|
| In this case you would simply allow people from outside
| the town to work in the town, or get more people to move
| into town. If you scale up this scenario to cities,
| provinces, and ultimately nations, it's clear that at
| some point you must choose between structural
| unemployment (ie number of workers greater than number of
| jobs to be done), bullshit jobs (people who would be
| structurally unemployed are hired to do unnecessary
| tasks), a managed economy (employment opportunities
| restricted to ensure necessary work gets done at any
| population level), or immigration/emigration of labor
| (labor supply varies to meet demand) regardless of wages.
| In practice you'll likely get a combination of the above.
| throwaway85825 wrote:
| That's all nonsense.
|
| The market for anything isn't infinite. When S/D shifts
| the market price changes to reflect that. The price
| reflects the relative supply and demand. You seem to be
| operating under the delusion that prices must be fixed at
| where you desire them and that no market existing there
| is a failure. In fact the availability of goods and
| services in a market is a function of your willingness to
| pay a market price for them. If you don't objectively
| value such goods and services they won't exist for you.
| It's not the responsibility of everyone else to subsidize
| your lifestyle because you're not willing to pay market
| prices.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| That's to the US. I believe in Europe it's Arab hoipolloi
| philipallstar wrote:
| They definitely aren't, but whomever they are they still
| requires houses, power and water.
| panick21_ wrote:
| And literally all the limits on those things are
| artificial. Its the same right wing idiots that want this
| referendum that prevent smart transportation
| infrastructure in cities, that delay important
| transportation investments, that prevent bike
| infrastructure, that had the brilliant plan of buying
| cheap energy from France and Germany and so on.
| stymaar wrote:
| France is mostly empty by Europe's population density
| standard though, so even though it was likely not the
| intent of GP, it kind of works in that context.
| ahartmetz wrote:
| >France is mostly empty
|
| Which is so weird! France has large amounts of good
| farmland, some of the most modern (and unified, unlike
| Germany) government in Europe for a long time etc... no
| obvious reason to have just half the population density
| of Germany.
| stymaar wrote:
| It's mostly a matter of when the demographic transition
| started: https://nitter.net/pic/media%2FGEDBLvOXUAANUlK.p
| ng%3Fname%3D...
|
| France used to be "the China of Europe" (which is why we
| kept being at war with the whole continent at once). Had
| France followed their neighbors' demographic, it would be
| home to more than 200 million people today.
|
| The demographic collapse of France in the 19th century,
| while Germany kept growing, alone explains the French
| defeat in 1870 (and then the two world wars).
|
| More data on that piece of history, and a hypothesis to
| explain it, here:
| https://worksinprogress.co/issue/frances-baby-bust/
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > no obvious reason to have just half the population
| density of Germany.
|
| France was historically _always_ focused on Paris,
| because that was where the Emperor was. If you were not a
| farmer, there was little reason to live anywhere but
| Paris or other large cities.
|
| In contrast, Germany historically consisted of
| _thousands_ of small fiefdoms that each held some sort of
| local importance and each held authority of some sort.
| The Kaiser was pretty far away and only mattered in
| practice when the Kaiserreich was involved in some sort
| of conflict.
| oytis wrote:
| I think at least in Germany it's not true - among people
| coming to Germany there are more refugees of various kinds
| than professionals
| qingcharles wrote:
| These things aren't mutually-exclusive, though.
| oytis wrote:
| Technically true, but I don't think anyone tracks
| education levels of refugees.
| servo_sausage wrote:
| Every statistic regarding refugee attainment shows that
| it is; unless you are proposing to limit intake to only
| the skilled.
| jubilanti wrote:
| Germany and Switzerland have taken dramatically different
| responses to the migrant crisis.
| selfmodruntime wrote:
| citation needed
| duped wrote:
| Global freedom of movement was an inalienable right until
| European colonial powers noticed some of their colonies'
| peoples wanted to move to Europe.
|
| Large scale global movement is indicative of failure to
| uplift the globe from violence, poverty, and climate change.
| It makes a lot more sense to me for the global powers who
| don't want mass migration to do something to fix its causes
| instead of retreating inward and succumbing to nativism.
| rayiner wrote:
| > Global freedom of movement was an inalienable right until
| European colonial powers noticed some of their colonies'
| peoples wanted to move to Europe.
|
| What an absurd assertion. Where did you learn that? Read up
| about Roman border control and immigration policy, and what
| they required of immigrants into Roman territory.
| selfmodruntime wrote:
| There was no global freedom of movement. Ever.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| The second paragraph is a reasonable political position,
| but the first is blatantly ahistorical. See
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passport#Antecedents.
| teiferer wrote:
| > mass migrations
|
| > pretty full ones
|
| C'mon, why parrot this nonsense? There are no "mass
| migrations" and neither the European countries nor the US are
| "full". Yes the Europeans screwed up real integration across
| the board, but nobody is really working on fixing that.
| Easier to just claim to be full and the immigrants are
| causing higher crime rates so no more people in but oh
| demographics, please everybody make more babies!
| bojan wrote:
| [flagged]
| throwaway85825 wrote:
| Are the people supposed to eat rocks? Agriculture takes a
| lot of land but people need to eat.
|
| If anything agriculture is going to require more land in
| order to be sustainable.
| selfmodruntime wrote:
| well duh let's just import food from elsewhere (and
| completely ignore that foreign politic squabbles might
| crash this system)
| throwaway85825 wrote:
| It's not like countries that import the majority of their
| calories have frequent food riots or anything.
| bojan wrote:
| People do need to eat, but over 80% of the Dutch
| agricultural produce is being exported.
|
| Also, good portion of it isn't even meant for human
| consumption. Think flowers or cattle feed.
|
| This is not about feeding the population or about
| sustainability. It's simply about profit.
| picofarad wrote:
| Are the cows pets?
| autoexec wrote:
| If they're exporting crops that's about feeding
| _somebody_. People who would have to try to get their
| food elsewhere and have to worry about the standards
| /quality of those new sources. It's even perfectly fine
| for people to grow and sell flowers. There may be ways to
| make it more efficient, and maybe the government should
| be encouraging that so they can buy up some of the saved
| land, but I'd bet there are ecological consequences to
| paving over flower farms too.
| shimman wrote:
| Does EU have the USA problem where most farmers are
| basically sharecroppers where they are mandated where they
| can buy their seed, buy their fertilizers, where they buy
| their chicks/sows/calfs, what equipment they can buy, how
| they can repair their equipment, where they can sell their
| crops, and at what specific prices all from a single
| undemocratic corporation?
|
| In the USA it's basically corporations that run everything
| and drive the farmers into poverty where said corporations
| can then buy their land and rely on undocumented workers to
| keep the abuse going.
|
| From the outside EU farmers seem to have better labor
| relations, but don't know.
| greggoB wrote:
| Swiss here, living in a small town quite close to
| farmers. I would expect if it was the case here, I would
| have heard about it, given my proximity. I'm aware of
| this "arrangement" in the US, never heard of it happening
| anywhere in the EU - I haven't done a comprehensive study
| though, maybe someone with more knowledge can say more.
| philipallstar wrote:
| The Netherlands is completely tiny compared to many of the
| countries people are coming from, and the land is
| allocated. You can't replace the farms with suburbs
| throughout the country, and even if you did, then what? Is
| it allowed to be full then? Or should people still leave
| their much _more_ land-rich origins to come anyway?
| epolanski wrote:
| Where are the full ones?
|
| Working age population is decreasing in Europe. It's only
| really major cities that suffer under development, and even
| among them it's just some, not the majority.
|
| And despite all the bitching, even extra-EU immigrants are a
| huge resource for most European countries. In Italy e.g.
| extra-EU immigrants contribute to 14% of taxes and receive
| less than 2% of benefits, as many of them come here as young
| adults and leave before qualifying for pension anyway so the
| bulk of social services (school and healthcare) is
| essentially largely subsidized by immigrants.
|
| In Germany extra-EU immigrants are on average net
| contributors to welfare state too.
|
| Yes, many among them stay poor, don't integrate and tend to
| fall for minor, petty and some for violent crime.
|
| What you hear little about are the insane dangers of
| organized crime like Italians and Albanians on the other
| hand, because they move hundreds of billions and are a drag
| to the economy in most of Europe.
| xenonite wrote:
| > In Germany extra-EU immigrants are on average net
| contributors to welfare state too.
|
| Interesting. By what cost does this measure loss of freedom
| due to increased surveillance, decreased freedom of
| movement especially for women. Also increased cost and
| decreasing quality of police, law, education, or even
| street cleaning...
| dmitrygr wrote:
| > In Germany extra-EU immigrants are on average net
| contributors to welfare state too.
|
| All the data I find shows them contributing less than
| natives, and even MORE less if corrected for age.
| https://www.econstor.eu/handle/10419/232517
| marcus_holmes wrote:
| Makes me wonder about what's happening in those large, empty,
| countries and how cheap land would be there...
| teiferer wrote:
| > interesting
|
| The word I'd choose instead is "concerning" if not "scary".
| whycome wrote:
| Just wait til Canada joins the EU and we will have a rethinking
| of any such unions as not necessarily being related to
| geographic location.
| bsimpson wrote:
| I was a teenager when 9/11 happened.
|
| Until that point, I thought wars were a stupid thing that
| humanity realized were stupid and stopped doing.
| ksd482 wrote:
| Change is the only constant.
|
| Nothing lasts forever. Good times will come and go and so would
| bad times.
|
| I think as humans we are used to small time frames which are
| proportional to our own lifetime.
|
| But the world: say climate, population, geology etc. moves at a
| much different cycle, if at all you can call it a cycle since
| none of the iterations are exactly the same.
|
| So the lesson is this: change is coming. Change will always be
| coming. Embrace it.
|
| If you like something, you have to struggle to preserve it as
| much as you can, for as long as you can, but you can never make
| it permanent.
| throwaway85825 wrote:
| Embrace negative change?
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47015345
| andrewstuart wrote:
| But without population growth there will be no economic growth,
| the economy will stall it will be an unmitigated disaster.
|
| Every country must grow as much as it possibly can and then keep
| growing much more than that.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _without population growth there will be no economic growth_
|
| This is not true. Productivity is the mediator between a
| constant population and economic growth. (The world economy has
| grown much faster than its population over the last 100 years.
| And the U.S. still out produces the more-populous India.)
| incompatible wrote:
| I assume that's meant sarcastically, but it does sum up the
| capitalist mindset. It's taken along with the understanding
| that it's fine if all the new economic output ends up in the
| hands of the 1%.
| notimetorelax wrote:
| As a voting member of the population all I can say is - good luck
| winning it... We have silly initiatives once in a while, that's
| because you don't need that much to start one.
| FabCH wrote:
| Don't be so quick.
|
| You know full well that the polls are 52% no. It will be a
| razor thin rejection and the SVP will try again until they find
| one that passes.
| bootsmann wrote:
| Its honestly so annoying, every 3 years we have to vote
| against the same garbage proposal because the SVP is
| unwilling to accept the will of the electorate.
| HerbManic wrote:
| Pretty much. Many people ignored Brexit because they
| basically thought it would never get through until it crawled
| through with a tiny margin.
|
| Do not get complacent, once that happens this stuff can
| quietly grow very fast and suddenly happen in what feels like
| a total blind side.
| herbst wrote:
| Don't look at tiktok then. It seems pretty much won in there.
| alberto-m wrote:
| The strong point of the Swiss political system is that the
| government is, by (EDIT) convention, made up by all significant
| parties. No major political force can say "if only we were in
| power..." because they already are. Also, no party can create
| disasters and then disappear and leave the consequences to the
| following election winners to deal with.
|
| This referendum is an attempt by the members of SVP/UDC, the
| right-most party, to show that on immigration topics they have
| more popular support than what their relative power in the
| government is. Their proposed solution is very crude, on the
| other hand the opposition parties' position is basically "do
| nothing, everything is going fine". I would have hoped the
| government to offer some kind of compromise proposal (which they
| are allowed to do and appears as third option in many
| referendums), but it seems the Swiss citizens will be faced with
| a "all or nothing" choice.
|
| As a novel immigrant, as much as I appreciate the political
| system of my new host country, I was quite disappointed by the
| referendum campaign from both sides. Most of the propaganda
| concerning this vote has emotional and apocalytic tones ("the
| immigrants will steal our welfare and overpopulation will
| transform Switzerland into Kowloon" vs "we will become a pariah
| state, our pensioners will die unassisted due to the lack of
| nurses, EU will tariff us to death").
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Yeah, the marketing for this referendum has been awful. But as
| a mixed-heritage Swiss-American (continental Indian), I'm also
| sympathetic to the argument that some geographies and political
| systems have a natural maximum population they can sustain.
| (Unsurprisingly, the SVP's marketing may be the thing that tips
| me against this.)
| tonfa wrote:
| > This referendum is an attempt by the members of SVP/UDC, the
| right-most party, to show that on immigration topics they have
| more popular support than what their relative power
|
| Not really about immigration but EU relationship. Almost every
| SVP initiative tries to create a contradiction in the
| constitution with foreign agreements to force an "exit".
|
| > The strong point of the Swiss political system is that the
| government is, by law, made up by all significant parties.
|
| It's a tradition, not a rule (the composition of the council is
| simply the result of an election by the parliament).
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_formula_(Swiss_politics)
| alberto-m wrote:
| > It's a tradition, not a rule
|
| Amended, thanks!
| cynicalsecurity wrote:
| Leaving the EU or ending free movement with EU countries leads to
| a significant increase in immigration from the third world, as
| Brexit showed.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| It really doesn't have to. Britain being incompetent is sort of
| its own chapter in governance.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| no true scotsman
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Not what that means.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| Thats exactly what that means. The UK did the thing you
| want to do and had a bad outcome because they didn't do
| it right. The true and best and correct way to get it
| done of course would have none of those bad outcomes.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _UK did the thing you want to do_
|
| The UK invoked Article 50. It didn't have to, but it
| chose to because Britain. There is no world in which
| Switzerland is the party that tears up all of its EU
| agreements.
|
| If someone says that's a bad dog and I say no, that's a
| cat, that's not an example of No True Scotsman, it's a
| category error.
| karmakurtisaani wrote:
| Free movement is at the heart of the EU project. You
| start restricting that and the EU will tear up the
| agreements. We saw this already some 10 years ago when a
| similar vote passed, and EU stopped a lot of
| collaborations with the Swiss.
| qalmakka wrote:
| It's clear to everyone involved that the EU deeply
| regrets how they did the Swiss agreements. Switzerland
| basically ended up in a parallel carbon copy of the EFTA
| for all intents and purposes. It was clearly stated
| during the Brexit charade that the bureaucratic fatigue
| of having so many cherry picked agreements with
| Switzerland made the likelihood of doing the same with
| the UK basically zero.
|
| The EU has always been clear that the single market comes
| alongside the four freedoms. If Switzerland approves this
| referendum that's a very high chance they will have to
| exit the single market too, which will hurt Switzerland
| immensely.
|
| This is very ironic to me, because right now we live in a
| world where the irrelevance of small nations is getting
| clearer and clearer by the day. Political norms and
| international law are being trampled daily by the larger
| powers, and Switzerland was recently at the very end of
| it when Trump basically bullied them by imposing on them
| tariffs that were vastly higher than the EU and then
| ghosting them because he couldn't give a shit about them
| selfmodruntime wrote:
| You're using that fallacy wrong.
| Argonaut998 wrote:
| The Swiss ruling class don't have as much disdain for their
| populace. It will only end up that way if the Swiss people will
| it.
|
| A lot of the UK's problems were a result of the EU being
| vindictive as well. The EU won't act vindictively because they
| aren't in the EU.
| cynicalsecurity wrote:
| Vindictive how? That it refuses to let the Brits have their
| cake and eat it?
| Argonaut998 wrote:
| Vindictive in preventing trade agreements. Vindictive like
| France doing nothing to stop the immigrants going through
| the channel
| derelicta wrote:
| I propose we set it at 4Mio instead, deport all the German
| speakers and give their properties to the French-speaking ones.
| markstos wrote:
| No Population Growth in My Backyard -- NPGIMBY.
| PowerElectronix wrote:
| First step towards a purge civilization. Also, rather
| narrowminded (to be expected, tho) to not expect your population
| to naturally grow beyond 10m (at 9.1 now) just based on the
| normal progress of healthcare and wellbeing.
| dweinus wrote:
| I'm sure they are very proud of themselves for sneaking racist
| anti-immigrant policy in under the guise of left wing
| environmental rhetoric.
| FabCH wrote:
| One interesting point for me is that, IMHO, the propaganda on the
| ,,no" side wad _abysmal_.
|
| The counter arguments are awful and they are presented awfully
| and not even in such high quantity as you would expect.
|
| I think it has a good chance of passing just because of that.
|
| And then political shitf***y will begin with ,,we don't know how
| to turn this into law!", which is not good for the basis of
| democracy...
| Leherenn wrote:
| I agree, but it's also a lot easier to promise a silver bullet
| to everything than to propose improvements to the actual, hard
| problems.
|
| Yes infrastructure are strained, but it's not like nothing is
| being done. It's just that it take decades, and will be too
| little, too late.
|
| Same thing with housing. Every one is saying we need to make
| the procedures more efficient, but when it comes time to
| actually makes changes, there's no consensus to drop anything.
|
| They could have done better, but it would have been very easy
| to make nothing but empty promises. I prefer they didn't.
|
| Although I thought weird that SVP brought the "we will need to
| increase retirement age" themselves. It's actually pretty
| likely, but sounds like a massive own goal so close to the vote
| given how unpopular it is.
| izacus wrote:
| I'm sure blaming the "propaganda" will help you about as much
| as it helps Americans after voting for their anti immigration
| party nonsense.
| kuboble wrote:
| Being in Switzerland it looks to me like this is a really tough
| referendum.
|
| Both sides have very good arguments and from the side it looks
| like either way the Switzerland has to give up some asoects of
| its high quality of life.
|
| If the initiative succeeds, Switzerland will get a large hit from
| the cancelation of a lot of bilateral agreements with the EU.
|
| If the population exceeds 10M then the current rail and road
| infrastructure will not handle it well.
|
| I have already been on a train which refused to move due
| overload. And it would only depart if enough people have
| disembarked. The autobahn are already having hours long traffic
| jams at peak hours and with extra million people it will
| multiply.
|
| And it's almost impossible to significantly improve the
| throughput of rail and autobahn without extreme projects.
|
| It looks like a lose / lose situation is a sense and a people are
| going to decide which hit to take.
| contagiousflow wrote:
| Can you explain how adding frequency to the train network will
| not work to compensate higher ridership?
| hvb2 wrote:
| You can't add more trains if the schedule is full to the
| brink. You would need to add train tracks, and that requires
| big projects
| throw-the-towel wrote:
| And it is in fact so full that traibs crossing over from
| Germany sometimes get denied entry into the Swiss networks
| because there's no room to fit them in the schedule.
| sixhobbits wrote:
| uh they get denied entry if they are late because german
| trains often are and it wreaks havoc on swiss timetabling
| where trains still generally depart to the minute and
| many commuters plan their day around making connections
| with a 2 minute change time. if the ICE from basel to
| zurich is late then switzerland runs their own
| replacement in its spot and denies entry to the german
| train to avoid knockon delays.
|
| yes the schedule is full but its not just no space for
| more trains, more no space for unpredictable trains
| t0mas88 wrote:
| The Netherlands should do this as well, maybe DB will
| then at some point figure out how to run a train on time.
| The ICEs from Germany are more often late than on time,
| which then causes delays for other trains using the same
| tracks.
| spockz wrote:
| AFAICT they only get denied if they are not on time.
| throw-the-towel wrote:
| Well that was my point. They come late, and there's
| nowhere to stick them in the schedule because it's
| already full.
| kaufmae wrote:
| Frequency is basically 15 minutes almost all over the country
| already
| Schiendelman wrote:
| That's almost laughably infrequent - you can use single
| level trains with more doors to triple that without even
| going to automation.
| throw-the-towel wrote:
| Has any railway network managed to get less than 15
| minute headways? Metros don't count, they're isolated and
| often enclosed.
| spockz wrote:
| At some point we had 10m intercity intervals between
| Rotterdam/utrecht and Utrecht/Amsterdam in NL.
| tonfa wrote:
| Seems like it's 4 per hour on Rotterdam/Utrecht, seems
| similar to Geneva/Lausanne with 6 per hour.
|
| In any case, I think commuters are fine with every 15
| min, as long as there's enough seats. (for long distance
| like trains, my feeling is that frequency below 15min
| doesn't have a lot of impact, unlike shorter distance
| public transport like tram/bus/subway)
| t0mas88 wrote:
| Jup, quite common in the Netherlands. There are 10 minute
| trains from Utrecht to Amsterdam. And form Rotterdam and
| Den Haag to Schiphol. And from Utrecht to Den Bosch and
| Eindhoven.
|
| Most of these are double decker trains and long platforms
| so they move a lot of people at once.
| trnglina wrote:
| Most of Tokyo's mass transit network is absolutely
| neither isolated nor enclosed, and operates with vastly
| higher frequencies.
|
| Here's is the timetable for a suburban station on a
| commuter lines: https://train-
| cloud.navitime.biz/en/odakyu/railroads/timetab...
|
| On a weekday at peak hours, there are up to 20+ trains an
| hour, with commuter trains continuing directly into Metro
| systems, and directly onto different commuter lines on
| the other end.
| yerich wrote:
| The highest frequency city pairs I can think of, at peak
| periods, looking at available tickets this week:
|
| Shanghai Hongqiao to Hangzhou East is about 10 high speed
| trains per hour, all trains using the same line.
|
| Tokyo to Shin-Osaka is also about 10 high speed trains
| per hour.
|
| Taipei to Taichung is 8-9 trains per hour, high speed +
| conventional. Shanghai to Suzhou is similar.
|
| Rome to Florence is 6-7 trains per hour.
|
| Hong Kong West Kowloon to Shenzhen North is 6 high speed
| trains per hour.
|
| Beijing South to Tianjin is 5-6 high speed trains per
| hour.
| Schiendelman wrote:
| The Tokaido shinkansen has as low as 3 minute headways at
| peak times.
| tempay wrote:
| It's not simple with the "clock-face scheduling" system which
| is used which times the trains to all meet at the big nodes
| (Zurich, Bern, Basel) so connections work. To achieve this
| trains are supposed to fit into 30/60/120 minute beats which
| synchronise the entire system. See [1,2] for how this works.
|
| Also many of the most important parts of the system are at
| capacity. Bigger trains can help but a lot of these gains
| have already been realised in the crowded areas. The current
| hope is digitalising signaling to allow density to be
| increased but that's not simple/cheap even if it's cheaper
| than working on the lines themselves.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clock-face_scheduling
|
| [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMbV1rIPhCg
| contagiousflow wrote:
| I'm not saying this is wrong, that makes a lot of sense.
| But on the other hand why have I never heard of other, much
| more dense countries facing this problem? I just never hear
| of Japan, China, Germany, Taiwan, etc seeing overcrowded
| trains and raise their hands saying "there can't possibly
| be a solution!"
| throw-the-towel wrote:
| Germany's passenger rail is notoriously failing. China is
| big and empty compared to Switzerland so there's lots of
| room to build. Japan's population is stagnant, and so
| train use might be stagnant too. (No idea about Taiwan.)
| mahkeiro wrote:
| What does it have to do with they way they have to manage
| way higher population density? Singapore is 2/3 Swiss
| population on 1/3 of the Canton of Vaud.. They are 18
| Chinese cities with a population over 10 million.
| tempay wrote:
| It's not impossible, but Switzerland's geography means
| tunneling is involved in adding capacity which makes it
| very expensive. Also the beautiful synchronisation of a
| country-wide integrated timetable where you can reliably
| get between any two places in the country with
| connections that always make sense is a point of national
| pride.
|
| Japan, Taiwan and China all added dedicated
| infrastructure which took a long time and cost a fortune
| (vs the shared tracks currently used for
| intercity/regional/European freight). Tokyo accepts
| famously absurd levels of overcrowding during peak hours.
| Deutsche Bahn in Germany is widely thought of a joke due
| to chronic underinvestment meaning on-time trains are
| surprising.
|
| That said, these technical concerns have nothing to do
| with the 10 million proposal. It's worth asking why a
| camp that spent decades opposing sustainability
| legislation has suddenly discovered the word now that it
| can be pointed at immigration.
| tonfa wrote:
| Yeah there's tons of work ongoing. Lots of line close to
| the big hubs have ongoing construction to eventually
| switch to 15min takt.
|
| Improvements on various train station (new underground
| stations in Geneva and Luzern, extra platforms, etc.).
|
| https://company.sbb.ch/en/railway-development/future-
| rail/na...
|
| (for example, there's also lots of tram, etc. projects)
| easyThrowaway wrote:
| Are they counting "frontalieri" towards that cap?
|
| No? Funny how that works, isn't?
| Asmod4n wrote:
| Capping a population is a short term solution creating huge
| issues for the following generations. Examples: lots of places
| this happened.
| missedthecue wrote:
| I agree. Enacting the deliberate policy of enforcing stasis
| sounds very appealing if one is incapable of conceptualizing
| second and third order consequences.
| ausbah wrote:
| that seems to be exceedingly common with boomers.
| shotgunning lord knows how much for the sake of keeping
| their current net worth up
| Stevvo wrote:
| ETCS level 2 can increase rail capacity by orders of magnitude
| without laying any new track. You can have multiple trains
| following each other separated by stopping distance instead of
| having to separate trains between trackside signals.
| panick21_ wrote:
| Not really, the reality is that in some places Switzerland
| doesn't use ETCS 2 because it limits our system because ours
| is better.
|
| I think you mean ETCS Level 3.
|
| But that's just one of many investments that could be made.
| d3m0t3p wrote:
| I don't think so, faster trains are overtaking slower trains.
| There is simply not enough space between the station to
| overtake without having an acceleration that would damage the
| trains or the tracks. For example in western switzerland the
| maximal train speed for the fastest trains are ~130 Km/h
| while the same train can go up to 200 in some swiss-german
| part, only due to more congestion on the western part. Trains
| cannot be bigger, some of them are already too big for the
| smaller train station and in case of rerouting / unexpected
| stop this causes issue. You cannot make them higher too.
|
| You could get ride of the smaller train , only allowing big
| city to survive or decrease the commodity traffic or increase
| the rail network or increase the train station (more tracks
| allowing to overtake there, and have bigger trains) There is
| no easy solution otherwise it would have been done.
| panick21_ wrote:
| > If the population exceeds 10M then the current rail and road
| infrastructure will not handle it well.
|
| Actually it will do just fine. Maybe if the very party who is
| proposing this wouldn't have spent 20 years preventing
| infrastructure improvements it would handle it even better.
| Maybe if this very same party wouldn't continue to fight
| sensible transportation choices at every turn. Maybe if this
| party wouldn't spend endless time and energy trying to put as
| much money as possible in unpopular and irrational highway
| expansion projects.
|
| There are lots of easy upgrades we can do to our transportation
| infrastructure. For example, Zimmerbergtunnel 2. This was known
| to be needed since the early 90s, and was planned. But was not
| done and is now in planning. We did it in 2 stages, making it
| much, much more expensive. But in the same period we spend as
| much as we did on Zimmerbergtunnel 2 on highway expansions that
| have lesser returns.
|
| > And it's almost impossible to significantly improve the
| throughput of rail and autobahn without extreme projects.
|
| Well we should get moving on some extreme projects then, or
| maybe not have the party that proposing this constantly stand
| in the way of sensible polices.
|
| Anybody who seriously thinks about this will realize having new
| high speed line across the country would be great. But they
| would never let that happen.
|
| NEAT was an extreme project, and it will provide benefits for
| centuries.
| dguest wrote:
| I'm probably missing something. This would seem a bit problematic
| for some organizations that put Switzerland on the world stage,
| e.g.
|
| - The UN
|
| - CERN
|
| - The Red Cross
|
| - The WHO
|
| - The World Economic Forum
|
| - ETH Zurich
|
| There are probably a lot of others I'm missing.
|
| I'd imagine international banks also benefit from recruiting
| foreign nationals to do business with their home countries, and
| not just because there's a shortage of domestic labor. The whole
| point of these organizations is to be the _headquarters_ of a
| much larger international project.
|
| I guess maybe there will be a lot of weird exceptions if this
| were to go though. Otherwise, good luck sourcing your diplomats
| from entirely Swiss people.
| throw-the-towel wrote:
| The Swiss have historically been so isolationist, they refused
| to join the fricking UN until 2002. Some of the headquarters
| you're referencing have been there since the 19th century,
| they'll be fine.
| dguest wrote:
| Isolationist is an interesting way to describe Switzerland:
| economically they're probably one of the most internationally
| integrated, and thus dependent, countries in the world.
| throw-the-towel wrote:
| True, and yet at the same time they're incredibly wary of
| political and military alliances.
| nairboon wrote:
| For good reason, at the Congress of Vienna 1815 the
| largest powers in Europe signed a treaty that guarantees
| Switzerland's neutrality. As a result, Switzerland got
| spared in world war one and two. So far not entering into
| any alliances has been a very good strategy for
| Switzerland to ensure peace.
| bapo wrote:
| Swiss here and able to vote.
|
| In fact, just posted my voting letter today, before taking a 1h
| bike ride through the biggest city in Switzerland, having lots of
| space and freedom biking around in our beautiful city.
|
| When taking the train to my parents house, I pass several farms
| and landly smaller cities. Alot of free space in between those,
| train mostly has spare seats, depending on rush hour timings.
| There usually are several big commercials on private farmer land
| stating "NO to 10 Million Population", prompting people to vote
| YES on the SVP/UDC initiative.
|
| The initiative's lancers seem to play a lot on people's fear of
| overcrowding, which even in the most population-dense city in
| Switzerland seems like a joke. There's a lot of space and quality
| of living is still amazing here.
|
| Yes, during rush hours, you might have to stand for 15-30min in
| public transport. Yes, finding an appartment is getting harder
| and more difficult.
|
| But is this a problem of more people coming here or the failures
| of the state preparing for future population growth? We have so
| much space, benefits from diverse cultures and love for human
| beings.
|
| My letter was specifically voting AGAINST this initiative.
| Schiendelman wrote:
| It's not just the state - it's your neighbors pushing the same
| building restrictions as the rest of the developed world, where
| people say "I don't want another neighbor next to me", which
| results in too few apartments for even the existing people's
| children...
| kakacik wrote:
| You should check Geneva then - they are building apartment
| buildings like crazy in past 5 years. Too much if you ask me
| - in very center, almost every small park or green spot is
| now 6 story concrete building. Only the biggest protected
| parks are untouched. City is visibly and permanently
| degrading into concrete field. Weirdly schizophrenic move -
| they try to keep pushing bike lanes everywhere, even where
| not safe to share the road, yet they also remove greenery and
| trees. I guess the money is too juicy. But not to just bash -
| they build on outskirts too.
|
| Switzerland as a country usually strikes good balance between
| various extremes, much better than US or EU countries do. I
| have no doubt they will work it out, not ideally, but better
| than most. Immigration they tackled much better than rest of
| Europe for example.
|
| And for the vote - its 1:1 Brexit. Vote for capping, damage
| your long term prosperity, and those unpopular jobs still
| will need to be staffed, or country will work worse, be
| dirtier etc. And if one can earn cleaning streets or putting
| stuff in shop shelves as much as cca doctor in France (with
| higher costs of life, but it doesn't have to be extreme), the
| amount of people willing to try coming and working is
| basically endless.
|
| The idea one can freeze time and keep the country as some
| idealized image from their childhood (without the nasty stuff
| that happened ie in 70s to orphaned kids en masse, aka
| Verdingkinder), one would have to become second North Korea.
| Everything changes these days, massively and quickly.
| Dictators won't be sending their kids to study here under
| false names anymore, would they.
| lejalv wrote:
| I agree about bike lanes in Geneva, they should take the
| space away from cars. Their success is so phenomenal, that
| they are carrying more passengers/h in some sections than
| the much wider street they flank.
| diath wrote:
| These jobs are unpopular because the pay is shit, not
| because people don't want to do them, the government could
| simply have grants/bonus program for people employed in
| these positions so that the taxpayer money directly funds
| the bettering of the society and environment around them.
| Besides, Japan is a good real world example that you do not
| need to lean on immigrant labor to stop your country from
| becoming "dirty"; it's one of the most ethically
| homogeneous countries and also one of the cleanest places
| you can visit.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Yeah... but aren't there many more poor people in Japan,
| too?
| alephnerd wrote:
| > Japan is a good real world example that you do not need
| to lean on immigrant labor to stop your country from
| becoming "dirty"
|
| Japan heavily utilizes foreign workers via a Gulf style
| guestworker program, and even that has led to the far-
| right Sanseito becoming Japan's highest rated opposition
| party and the far-right wing of the LDP winning internal
| party politics.
| aprilthird2021 wrote:
| > Japan is a good real world example that you do not need
| to lean on immigrant labor to stop your country from
| becoming "dirty"; it's one of the most ethically
| homogeneous countries and also one of the cleanest places
| you can visit.
|
| It's also one of the worst developed nation economies and
| has a massive old, shrinking population problem and is
| well associated with people having no kids, having no
| prospects for a better life, and having huge amounts of
| its population live alone shuttered from the outside
| world.
|
| A good economy has many benefits and skilled immigration
| can significantly improve developed nation economies.
| jnwatson wrote:
| Geneva is the 2nd most expensive city to live in (behind
| Zurich). I commend any attempt at moderating prices by
| building more housing.
| tempay wrote:
| > in very center, almost every small park or green spot is
| now 6 story concrete building
|
| I struggle to see this. Central Geneva is full of
| beautiful, well-maintained green spaces and children's play
| areas with plenty of larger parks scattered around.
| aprilthird2021 wrote:
| > Too much if you ask me
|
| Good thing no one asked you. Why should you have a say in
| how someone else uses their land if all they are doing is
| building more housing units?
| rayiner wrote:
| > benefits from diverse cultures
|
| You mean "benefits from increased population," right? Because
| isn't the whole theory that people are the same? If so, you're
| just adding new people who are exactly the same as the existing
| people. So the only benefits come from having more people, or
| more people with certain skills (if you're filtering based on
| that).
| bootsmann wrote:
| > more people with certain skills (if you're filtering based
| on that)
|
| This is how freedom of movement works, yes, and it's a key
| reason why our country is so rich.
| stymaar wrote:
| Nobody in Switzerland is worried about the population growing
| due to birthrate. This referendum is about stopping
| immigration (even though in Switzerland more than anywhere
| else, immigration is at the foundation of the country's
| wealth).
| rayiner wrote:
| > (even though in Switzerland more than anywhere else,
| immigration is at the foundation of the country's wealth).
|
| Is that true? Switzerland's foreign-born population was
| under 5% around WWII. Wasn't Switzerland already a rich
| country by then?
| moomin wrote:
| It saw a fair bit of immigration before the war to get
| there. The war itself obviously helped enrich them by not
| being in it and also practically zeroed immigration.
| Immigration continued after the war. There's other
| factors, obviously, like early industrialisation.
| tempay wrote:
| In 1910 the foreign-born population was 14.7% and the
| drop around WWII was caused by other factors.
|
| Much of the industrialisation and banking industry was
| driven by immigrants. Arguably the wealth of today is the
| product of managing to avoid the worst of WWII and
| profiting from Switzerland's "neutrality" but that's an
| entire conversation by itself.
| kakacik wrote:
| Well they were neutral, its just most folks, even
| otherwise smart ones, don't like true neutral behavior if
| it doesn't actually favor their side, hence such 'smart'
| snarky remarks I can see all the time, by people feeling
| they know history. Swiss accepted everybody, hundreds of
| thousands of refugees too, some parts even when it became
| obvious they will all face starvation since they were
| completely encircled by axis. Private banks accepted
| everybody's money, just like every global bank did before
| and after the war.
|
| They secretly helped allies - check Campione d'Italia
| story for example. Thats very far from neutral behavior.
| And so on. But most people don't want to know facts, they
| want simple black & white stories.
|
| It continues till today - they are officially neutral but
| look at their moves ie against russia during Ukraine war.
| Completely aligned with west (well apart from US which
| has top brass collaborating with their sworn mortal
| enemy). Look how their army looks like - 100%
| compatibility with NATO, 0% with russia or anybody else.
| They picked their side, they just don't boast around it,
| actions speak more than 1000 words.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Wasn 't Switzerland already a rich country by then?_
|
| In 1940, Switzerland's GDP/capita was 2.9x [EDIT: the
| world average]; it peaked at 4.4x in 2000 and is now 3.8x
| [1]. (It increases linearly, long term, from the mid 20s
| until 2000.)
|
| Relative to Western Europe, Switzerland was 1.6x in 1950,
| about the same as today.
|
| [1] https://www.rug.nl/ggdc/historicaldevelopment/maddiso
| n/relea...
| ashdksnndck wrote:
| I feel like I have to read this backwards to perhaps
| understand it. Is 2.9x the multiplier of Swiss GDP/capita
| vs the Western Europe average in 1940?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Sorry, edited for clarity.
| bsimpson wrote:
| If the referendum passes and the population crosses the
| threshold, Switzerland may need to remove itself from e.g.
| the Schengen area. All the remediations mentioned in the
| referendum are about suspending immigration.
| bluebarbet wrote:
| >in Switzerland more than anywhere else, immigration is at
| the foundation of the country's wealth
|
| Such a claim would need terms to be defined, even before
| justification. Switzerland's mercenary attitude to
| immigration is well known, yes. I would argue that
| endogenous factors (history and culture) are far more
| important in explaining Switzerland's success. Neither
| natural resources nor immigration are determinative of a
| country's wealth. See: Japan, which historically has had
| neither.
| aprilthird2021 wrote:
| All the butthurt people are going to come in here with
| screeds trying to upend a basic economic tenet that a
| growing population translates to economic growth if you can
| employ that growing population gainfully
| hibberl7 wrote:
| The nature of the immigration has changed. Switzerland
| would not be wealthy if its migrants were historically from
| Mogadishu and Hyderabad. It will not continue to be wealthy
| if it continues on this new and damned path.
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| > Because isn't the whole theory that people are the same? If
| so, you're just adding new people who are exactly the same as
| the existing people.
|
| That's a very dumb theory. People cannot just be exchanged:
| you cannot take say, 60 million people out of Bangladesh, put
| them in Japan, and expect Japan to stay the same. Just as you
| cannot take 60 million Japanese, put them in Bangladesh, and
| expect Bangladesh to stay the name.
|
| That's a fact. But I could give a shitload of historical
| examples too... Here's one: when white and black people
| arrived in the americas, there was still cannibalism taking
| place in both northern and southern america. The americas had
| neither white nor black people. Today there's no cannibalism
| anymore and there are not many kids sacrifices happening in
| the US to please Inca/Maya gods anymore either.
|
| A slightly more reasonable theory is that if you import
| people through immigration _at a reasonable rate_ , you can
| assimilate those people. For example for a long time in
| Europe female genital mutilation wasn't a thing anymore. Now
| sadly due to _mass_ migration, ask any ob-gyn doctor in
| western Europe what he sees and what kind of act he has to
| do: like re-stitching hymens to pretend the women-to-be-
| married are virgins (because, yes, there are patriarchal
| cultures where men are going to inspect a woman 's hymen to
| make sure she's a virgin).
|
| People just live in a fantasy land in their heads: there are
| 300 million women alive, today, who've been genitally
| mutilated (that's a very sizeable percentage of all the women
| out there). What's actually ongoing is weirder and shittier
| than most people realize.
|
| I say good for Switzerland to curb immigration a bit.
|
| People may be not dissimilar but cultures certainly are.
| kuerbel wrote:
| Also swiss here. So many people seem to think that this is
| about refugees. Wrong. It's about Europeans. Mostly Germans.
| They are educated and highly skilled and for some swiss, that's
| a problem. They blame them for not finding a job or an
| appartement. Just read the comments on inside paradeplatz, you
| can translate with any llm, on a post about the referendum. A
| subset of the swiss Middle class has decided that they don't
| like competition, they want them gone. Of course they
| themselves are never the problem, the german with a middle
| management position is however, because quote "they are only
| hiring other Germans".
|
| Also voted no of course.
| jansport123 wrote:
| seems to be a common concern amongst the local population
| everywhere "X identity is hiring only X identity"
| xenonite wrote:
| Yes, we have a really well recognized Spanish team lead
| here, yet he's mostly hiring Spanish people (in
| Switzerland), oh yes and one Italian is the exception.
|
| Also we had a German team lead hiring Germans, well
| surprise it is easier being with similar ones.
|
| Diversity back in the day meant Physics, Electrical
| Engineering and Mechanical Engineering working together...
| meken wrote:
| I'm an American and I just had the thought - if I was
| working in Japan at a Japanese company and I had the
| opportunity to hire, would I have a bias to hire other
| Americans?
|
| Honestly probably, since I understand them the best.
| influx wrote:
| And that seems suboptimal for a Japanese company?
| sashank_1509 wrote:
| I'd disagree. I'm not American or British but and in my
| experience Americans or British are the least ethnically
| biased people on the planet. Any other group, I could
| believe that they are biased but not Americans, or
| British. Something in their particular culture right now.
| pyuser583 wrote:
| It isn't just a lack of ethnic bias, it's a belief in
| capitalism or professionalism or "enlightened self-
| interest": hire the best person for the job, and everyone
| will be better off.
| dpark wrote:
| You're responding to an American who says he'd be biased
| towards Americans and telling him he's wrong.
|
| Maybe Americans are the least biased (though being an
| American I am not so sure) but that doesn't mean we
| aren't biased (even if sometimes for legitimate reasons
| like ease of communication).
| ThrowawayR2 wrote:
| Or perhaps said American genuinely is unaware of how much
| more biased other ethnic groups are in their own
| homelands.
| sashank_1509 wrote:
| Yes exactly, the American bias level right now is
| probably as low as it can get humanly.
| dpark wrote:
| Now this _I_ disagree with. I expect that you are
| interacting with a specific subset of Americans. A lot of
| Americans are deeply racist and xenophobic and I believe
| that the average could definitely get lower.
| dpark wrote:
| Okay, but the conversation was:
|
| Meken: "I wouldn't be biased"
|
| Sashank: "I disagree"
|
| Others being more biased doesn't make Americans unbiased.
| tqi wrote:
| Yes that's why country clubs and the Greek system never
| caught on...
| deepsun wrote:
| Yes, and that's normal (except for maybe eastern European
| cultures who better hire an American/west European).
| vasco wrote:
| > well surprise it is easier being with similar ones.
|
| It's not easier dealing with people from your own country
| but it is biased. From someone who has hired hundred+
| remote developers in europe for 10 years to lead them and
| out of those hired a total of 2 people from my country.
| Wouldn't have been hard either.
|
| At the same time I see some managers doing this,
| currently in another fully remote company have a manager
| colleague that has hired 3 brazillians back to back. Go
| figure. Just shows you that it's a biased person in other
| respects (we all are) and that they make zero efforts to
| keep it in check (this is a decision you make).
| dlahoda wrote:
| May be each foreigner in mgmt position should pass some
| exam on diversification and swiss history?
|
| Actually each foreigner to raise or get some state
| benefits should pass some exam?
| aprilthird2021 wrote:
| Because it's an unfalsifiable claim. If you need to bring
| in highly skilled people and most of them come from X Y or
| Z, it will be near impossible to distinguish in-group
| preference from a continuation of skilled immigration which
| for most countries that practice it, is beneficial for the
| economy.
|
| Also hiring is often based on trust and networks. People
| refer others to their company and jobs. That trust tends to
| work out pretty well for companies. If people get laid off
| they tell their friends and their friends pass on
| opportunities to them or try to help them find new jobs.
| And people tend to make friends with others they share a
| culture and language with.
|
| If you add a bunch of barriers to make companies have to
| hire proportional amounts of every ethnicity or culture,
| that slows down hiring and can be an extra regulatory
| burden for what reason?
| breakyerself wrote:
| There's no such requirement to hire proportional amounts
| of every ethnicity. There are requirements not to
| discriminate. Which isn't the same thing.
|
| When companies do make an effort to give everyone a fair
| shot there's a tendency for mediocre white men to lose
| out to more qualified minorities. The companies get
| better employees and more diverse perspectives.
|
| Then those white men feel spurned. They imagine they
| weren't hired because they're white. It's an easier pill
| to swallow and then the next thing you know DEI is the
| great Satan of low IQ white men.
| rayiner wrote:
| Can you show me where the "mediocre white men" are on
| this chart?: https://www.aei.org/wp-
| content/uploads/2017/06/med-1.png?x97...
|
| Are the "mediocre white men" the ones with a 27-29
| MCAT/3.4-3.59 GPA, who have a 21% chance of admission to
| medical school whereas a hispanic student in that same
| range has a 61% chance? Are those the "mediocre white
| men" you're talking about?
|
| > The companies get ... more diverse perspectives
|
| That makes no sense. The premise of non-discrimination
| laws is that someone's ethnic background doesn't affect
| their "perspectives" in ways that are material to
| employment.
| breakyerself wrote:
| That isn't the premise. The premise is that
| discriminating is morally wrong.
|
| Also when did we change the subject to college
| admissions?
| rayiner wrote:
| > The premise is that discriminating is morally wrong
|
| Yes. And the clearest evidence we have of anyone doing
| that at scale in modern times is DEI programs in college
| and medical school admissions.
|
| So why is it unreasonable for the people you call
| "mediocre white men" to conclude they're being
| discriminated against? If Harvard and other elite
| universities are willing to go to the Supreme Court to
| defend such discrimination, doesn't it stand to reason--
| absent data to the contrary--that the myriad companies
| and institutions run by graduates of those universities
| are doing the same thing?
|
| [1] Those numbers are medical school admissions, but the
| numbers for college admissions is similar:
| https://nypost.com/2023/06/29/supreme-court-affirmative-
| acti...
| aprilthird2021 wrote:
| > There's no such requirement to hire proportional
| amounts of every ethnicity. There are requirements not to
| discriminate. Which isn't the same thing.
|
| How will you prove and prosecute supposed discrimination?
|
| > When companies do make an effort to give everyone a
| fair shot there's a tendency for mediocre white men to
| lose out to more qualified minorities. The companies get
| better employees and more diverse perspectives.
|
| I just don't agree with this idea of "giving a more fair
| shot" if it's enforced because what it really is is
| slowing down hiring processes and second guessing
| people's judgments. I don't like it to bolster diversity
| and I don't like it to cut diversity (what many white
| nationalists in the US wish would happen in industries
| that hire from abroad like tech).
| rayiner wrote:
| If you're part of the majority group, you really don't see
| how cliquish people in minority groups are. Every time I
| get into a cab with another "brown" person, there is a Q&A.
| When they find out I'm from a muslim country, it's all "my
| brother," etc. I've always found it distasteful.
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| The people who fixate on this stuff are projecting.
| pstuart wrote:
| People in general tend to be _very_ tribal -- it 's in
| our DNA. When it's about "yay community!" its kinda nice
| but most the time it's "other tribe bad". I think this is
| a core to a lot of legislation.
|
| Not having a tribe to belong to I find the whole thing
| simultaneously amusing and horrifying looking in from the
| outside.
| soraminazuki wrote:
| I still can't believe we have hundreds of years of
| documented history to learn from, yet human intelligence
| is still blinded by bigotry.
| rayiner wrote:
| > When it's about "yay community! its kinda nice
|
| I don't find it nice. I've gotten free stuff on multiple
| occasions from co-ethnics (lots of Bangladeshis working
| in hotels in the New York area). It doesn't sit right
| with me, because at the same time we tell white people
| that ethnic favoritism is one of the worst social crimes.
| We would be very upset if they displayed the same kind of
| favoritism within their own group.
|
| For rules to have legitimacy, they must apply equally to
| everyone. So either "yay community" sentiment is
| acceptable, or it's not. It's in my interest for such
| sentiment to not be acceptable for white Americans, so it
| follows that it must be unacceptable for me as well.
| pstuart wrote:
| I hear you, I'm trying to find the bright side in
| "community" where people who don't know each other at
| least treat them as "brothers". The insular part is
| fucked and we need need to evolve past that.
|
| > For rules to have legitimacy, they must apply equally
| to everyone.
|
| Preach, brother! For this to happen we need to be
| prepared to examine the rules and how they are applied
| and call out when that isn't the case. Color, gender,
| faith, sexual orientation, origin, etc should never be
| qualifiers in how one is treated.
| yogorenapan wrote:
| I think it's pretty logical, though perhaps it is
| correlation rather than causation.
|
| Say I am hiring as a native English speaker in a Chinese
| company (while of course still knowing enough Mandarin to
| survive) and I have 3 candidates, one of whom also speaks
| English fluently. I would definitely be biased towards the
| English speaker, because I would work better with them.
|
| Now, it doesn't really matter what their ethnicity was, but
| there is a higher likelihood of them being of the same
| ethnicity. Especially if my first language is niche, the
| chances of hiring the same ethnicity would be higher.
|
| I've been on the receiving end of this before, being hired
| in part because I spoke English due to my manager while the
| rest of the company was primarily Mandarin
| einpoklum wrote:
| The text of the proposal disagrees with your claim. Or - are
| there lots of Europeans seeking asylum in Switzerland?
| 0xWTF wrote:
| Swiss as racists. Amazing. People know Americans harbor
| racist feelings because they are surrounded by people of many
| races. But it's trivial to demonstrate racism among any
| population as soon as you introduce an "other" of virtually
| any type.
| xenonite wrote:
| No it isn't racism as Germans had the same skin color. Keep
| in mind that Germans aren't stereotypical anymore.
|
| In Switzerland live over 41% migrants and children of
| migrants (just 8.4%). So the native Swiss are not just
| "surrounded" but greatly diminished.
| eqvinox wrote:
| Yeah, sure, it's nationalism instead of racism.
|
| Born on the wrong side of the Rhine? F right off.
|
| No better at all. Worse, arguably.
| api wrote:
| It wasn't that long ago that American racists debated
| whether Italians and even Irish were truly "white." The
| definition of white had expanded considerably over the
| years.
|
| Eastern Europeans, Jews (of course), and Russians were
| also at times not "white."
|
| Maybe we should just keep expanding it. Declare everyone
| white. Black people are just white people with more
| melanin.
|
| Then we can be racist about aliens from outer space.
| ndhbxyd wrote:
| Racists havent heard of Ashbys Law of Requisite Variety.
|
| Its also why they get left behind by everyone who has.
|
| Its an ever growing complex and unpredictable world.
| Sameness is not a strength in complexity theory.
| CGMthrowaway wrote:
| >Middle class has decided that they don't like competition,
| they want them gone. Of course they themselves are never the
| problem
|
| Yeah, screw the middle class. What do they know anyway?
| breakyerself wrote:
| I mean there is a tendency for people in the middle class
| to go all NIMBY and not want additional housing to be built
| which drives up the cost of housing. It's good that there's
| a middle class but there are also things that people in the
| middle class do that aren't good. Like drive f350s on their
| 40-minute commute to the office.
| izacus wrote:
| Well, first UK had to vote for their own anti immigration
| nonsense, then US tried out their MAGA winning and now it's
| time for Switzerland to follow in their footsteps and make
| their country great again with SVP at the helm.
|
| After all, this time it HAS to go better right?
| noncoml wrote:
| It didn't work out that well for UK the first time. So now
| they are trying a second time. By voting for the guy that
| promised he would solve it the first time. This time he
| really means it.
| brewtide wrote:
| Sounds familiar.
| like_any_other wrote:
| Sounds like a lovely place. Why wouldn't you want to pass a law
| to keep it that way?
| flexagoon wrote:
| Why would you want less people to live in a lovely place?
| skiing_crawling wrote:
| Maybe some (or many) people believe that more people will
| make it less "lovely". I think this is a popular stance and
| I think many people are more than satisfied with the
| current population density of their area.
| like_any_other wrote:
| You understand perfectly that the number of people affects
| what a place is like. That growing a small town of 10k into
| a metropolis of 1M will change it. Yet you're pretending
| that you don't, that this is a completely new idea for you.
| Why?
| eqvinox wrote:
| Because it is the place it is due to the conditions it
| has grown in. Take away the EU and Switzerland loses a
| significant part of their economic power, which is needed
| to sustain being the place it is. Just like Brexit.
| like_any_other wrote:
| > take away the EU
|
| Is not accepting infinity immigration "taking away the
| EU"? And the population density is even more part of the
| conditions it has grown in. But much much harder to fix
| if it increases too much - shouldn't they take a
| precautionary approach?
|
| Regardless, that's not the question I asked. I asked why
| the poster was pretending they don't know population
| number affects the quality of a place.
| eqvinox wrote:
| > Is not accepting infinity immigration "taking away the
| EU"?
|
| Have you read the page? Yes it is.
|
| > Regardless, that's not the question I asked. I asked
| why the poster was pretending they don't know population
| number affects the quality of a place.
|
| In that case: why are you pretending to not understand
| rhetorical questions after asking one yourself?
| like_any_other wrote:
| A rhetorical question is supposed to make you think, not
| state the obvious. Especially since the obvious _has
| already been stated_ - it is the premise of the
| referendum!
| eqvinox wrote:
| I can see the intended purpose isn't being achieved, time
| to let things be.
| austhrow743 wrote:
| To keep it lovely.
| MoonWalk wrote:
| Considering the other EU ramifications, this is basically
| Swixit, is it not?
| hocuspocus wrote:
| Yes. We can cap non-EU/EFTA immigration to zero but that's
| relatively small anyway. Getting out of Schengen-Dublin and
| more importantly the Freedom of Movement of workers would
| basically unravel all bilateral agreements.
| throw1234567891 wrote:
| Switzerland is not a member of the EU.
| autoexec wrote:
| It seems like a good idea to start worrying about population
| long before it feels overcrowded and there's no room left on
| the trains. The issue isn't about how much open space there is
| to stuff people into, but about how many people an area can
| sustainably support. I'm not sure that 10 million is a good
| target to aim for, but you sure don't want to wait until your
| quality of life declines before you start making plans.
|
| If people are already starting to have trouble finding work and
| housing that seems like the conversation is long overdue.
| nikolay wrote:
| "Diversity," really? You still drink this Kool-Aid in
| Switzerland?! Your growth rate is 0.75%! This is not going to
| lead to diversity but to replacement!
| dlahoda wrote:
| Could just stop state financing farmers and raise import taxes
| on non bio products which will raise food praises hence less
| people will be able to survive is better option?
| kamaal wrote:
| As a Indian I envy you.
|
| My whole life has been a struggle for living in places where
| there could be fewer humans.
| hibberl7 wrote:
| Please raise your voice. It's heartbreaking that European
| naivety is slowly turning the continent into something more
| resembling your home. So many people have no idea how good
| they have it. Thousands of generations of responsible
| custodianship discarded in an instant for the appearance of
| progressivism. They won't listen to themselves, they won't
| admit what they are seeing. Please try to make them
| understand.
| hibberl7 wrote:
| >benefits from diverse cultures
|
| Name one. God help me if you cite curry.
| trgn wrote:
| absent productivity increases, population growth is just there to
| maintain the welfare state for retirees, it's a perpetuum mobile.
| apart from that, i dont even know what the benefits of a growing
| population would be. switzerland is trying a different tack
| through democratic means.
| mahkeiro wrote:
| You don't know the advantage of a growing population, but you
| have not far to go in Europe to see the effect of a decreasing
| population, and it doesn't really look good.
| trgn wrote:
| isnt that just a temporary bottleneck? a self-confident
| generation might make the sacrifice. plus, the opposite of
| increasing isnt necessarily decreasing, stabilizing is
| another one.
| _trampeltier wrote:
| The question is not wrong, but the answer is. Here in
| Switzerlands middle land, the streets and trains are very
| crowded, not just during peek hours. On the other hand, it's
| already now hard to find people for almost any kind of work.
| lifestyleguru wrote:
| I think they suffer from universal problem that the job doesn't
| pay for housing anywhere within reasonable commute to the job,
| assuming that it's even possible to rent any housing at all.
| latency-guy2 wrote:
| > On the other hand, it's already now hard to find people for
| almost any kind of work.
|
| Why is it hard? Can't find a pick from the ~3% unemployment
| rate? That's approx 100-200k people, are you sure you can't
| find a person in that selection?
|
| Maybe you're asking a bit much for standards that you are
| weakly attempting at a defense or justification.
|
| This argument without any other qualifications reads to me as
| whinging that you're not getting everything you want. So lower
| your standards, offer more pay, or just move to a different
| country.
| sltkr wrote:
| Interesting that you're downvoted for pointing this out. Lots
| of people in Switzerland are struggling to find jobs, but no,
| they're all unfit, and we must import more immigrants.
|
| Then of course those immigrants are laid off and contribute
| to the unemployment number, and rather than hiring them back,
| people will say we should import even more immigrants, and so
| on.
| sltkr wrote:
| > On the other hand, it's already now hard to find people for
| almost any kind of work.
|
| Lots of people in Switzerland are struggling to find jobs,
| especially in the tech sector after mass layoffs and
| outsourcing.
|
| If you're looking to hire a full-stack software engineer in
| Switzerland, send me a message! But I bet you won't, because
| there isn't actually an abundance of jobs in Switzerland.
| okkdev wrote:
| Absolute dogshit we are voting on this week. Hopefully both gets
| denied. We are working ourselves into the bleakest future.
| didgetmaster wrote:
| So is everyone in Europe calling the Swiss a bunch of phobic
| racists for wanting to place restrictions on immigration; or is
| that judgement just reserved for Americans?
| oytis wrote:
| I think the Swiss are not known to be particularly open-minded
| in Europe. They have ton of money though and the landscape is
| great
| greggoB wrote:
| Given the initiative doesn't mention ethnicity/race but rather
| a population cap of people in general, Europeans (who are also
| white, FYI) might find it odd to do as you suggest.
|
| The US, meanwhile, has halted ALL refugees, except for white
| South Africans [0]. I leave it to you to decide if that
| discernment seems fair or not.
|
| [0] https://www.democracynow.org/2026/5/21/afrikaners
| vitalyan1234 wrote:
| there are several they/them in this very thread saying that
| it's a violation of human rights. so yeah.
| lifestyleguru wrote:
| Switzerland is much less desirable and attractive than they think
| they are.
| greggoB wrote:
| That's not at all reflected in the immigration numbers: ot has
| one of the highest proportional rates of immigration in Europe,
| and the brain drain of top talent from neighbouring countries
| has actually been a point of moral finger-wagging.
|
| Want to try again?
| rdevsrex wrote:
| This is a good move. I hope Switzerland doesn't become like the
| UK.
| vor_ wrote:
| Population caps by fiat have always been terrible moves.
| Example: every country that's ever had them.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| What counties have had population caps exactly, like the one
| proposed? I know China and Singapore tried to limit birth
| rates, otherwise some countries have various quotas/intake
| control for residencies, but those countries don't seem
| especially "failed", like Andorra or Singapore, not do they
| have "population caps".
| einpoklum wrote:
| > _... population has grown... ... number of people immigrating
| depends primarily on the labour market. When the economy is
| strong, companies... often recruit the ... workers they need from
| the EU._
|
| > _..._
|
| > _The... sustainability initiative...[:] If the permanent
| resident population exceeds 9.5 million ... the Federal Council
| and Parliament will need to take measures, particularly in the
| areas of asylum and family reunification._
|
| So, this measure says that if companies need more workers,
| Switzerland will refuse to grant asylum, and will prevent Swiss
| residents from having their spouse, child or parent come live
| with them.
|
| Regardless of whether population capping is legitimate or not,
| that sounds quite nasty. If the measure had said "in case of
| population growing, there will be a moratorium on recruiting
| employees from abroad", then you would have a discussion.
| h4kunamata wrote:
| Australia here, Switzerland knows something we don't, it is sad.
| sakex wrote:
| While I agree we need to keep our immigration under control, this
| is not the solution.
| noncoml wrote:
| Are they going to start executing people after 10M? How does it
| work? FIFO? or LIFO?
| sltkr wrote:
| Hacker News admins: can we please ban illiterate morons like
| this who think they are contributing anything of value by
| responding directly to the post title alone, while obviously
| not having read the actual posted article?
| noncoml wrote:
| The joke is that "cap the population at 10M" is already a
| dehumanizing spreadsheet fantasy.
|
| I just skipped to the punchline.
|
| Also, very Swiss of you to answer a joke about banning people
| from a country by asking to ban people from HN. Xenophobic
| much? Better focus your efforts on finding a job that the
| foreigners stole from you
| sltkr wrote:
| Where is the joke? What is funny about hundreds of thousand
| of Swiss people being unemployed and housing costs
| increasing every year?
|
| And clearly you still haven't bothered to read the
| initiative, which doesn't kick out anyone, but demands the
| government revises immigration laws if the population hits
| 9.5 million before 2050.
|
| But you _have_ found time to dig through my comments to
| find dirt on me to ridicule me. Clearly you're a hateful
| and despicable person.
|
| > Better focus your efforts on finding a job that the
| foreigners stole from you
|
| I never said a foreigner stole anything from me; I merely
| objected to the idea that Switzerland needs _more_
| foreigners to work jobs, while hundreds of thousands of
| residents are looking for work. I'm clearly a terrible
| human being for wanting to... _checks notes_ work a job for
| a living.
| Acrobatic_Road wrote:
| is this just a disguised anti-immigration policy? How is
| switzerland supposed to get to 10 million people with its
| fertility rate?
| dbg31415 wrote:
| It's still common in Geneva to see lawn jockeys on display.
|
| This is 100% about being racist with extra steps.
| dboreham wrote:
| Logan's Run!
| ekelsen wrote:
| What would they do if the natural birthrate were to tip it over
| the threshold? (Perhaps unlikely at current birthrates, but given
| that laws last long times, perhaps worth considering?)
| groan wrote:
| This is amazing and I hope it passes.
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