Basic income plan clearly rejected by Swiss voters • Hacker News Board

Re: Basic income plan clearly rejected by Swiss voters

#21

Post by rubyfan » Sun, Jun 05, 2016, 12:31 PM UTC

elcapitan wrote: post #4

I wish I would live in a country where essential political decisions like that are made by the people and not by some professional political elite in a far away capital.

It's your lucky day, wikiHow has step by step instructions:

How to Move to Switzerland

http://m.wikihow.com/Move-to-Switzerland

Re: Basic income plan clearly rejected by Swiss voters

#22

Post by _nalply » Sun, Jun 05, 2016, 12:32 PM UTC

tgb wrote: post #16

greendesk wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that basic income can only be "unconditional." If there are conditions attached to it, what might be they?

While that's how I read it, perhaps the condition would be citizenship. I.e. they don't want to simultaneously allow more people into their country and also give everyone in their country a lot of money for fairly obvious reasons. However, the article doesn't give translations of the actual measures so it's hard to say.

That's because the referendum is open ended. The referendum text: «The confederation provides for an introduction of an unconditional basic income.» It's a very short text.

https://bedingungslos.ch/de/pages/initiativtext (German)

The referendum committee made a non-binding proposal to give Fr. 2500 and if someone already earns Fr. 2500 they would not get additional money. The details would still need to be worked out by the parliament. In Switzerland being founded on consensus this means that after a «yes» a huge discussion would start how to implement the basic income. But it seems that the referendum is going to be rejected.

Re: Basic income plan clearly rejected by Swiss voters

#23

Post by yummyfajitas » Sun, Jun 05, 2016, 12:33 PM UTC

greendesk wrote: post #12

MikeNomad wrote: post #8

Not happy with the headline. They voted no for an "unconditional" basic income. I think that is a huge difference, especially when a majority of the voters also want immigration reform.

My understanding is that basic income can only be "unconditional." If there are conditions attached to it, what might be they?

One basic-income like proposal is that it's available to those who are willing to work for others. I.e., society owes you enough income to survive, but in turn you owe society the fruits of your labor.

The values of those obligations may not match up - i.e. unskilled people maybe paid $7.25/hour for labor worth only $3 - but at least it's a reciprocal situation with shared obligations. I.e., we're all in this together.

Re: Basic income plan clearly rejected by Swiss voters

#24

Post by Zarkonnen » Sun, Jun 05, 2016, 12:34 PM UTC

Coming from Switzerland, this is not at all surprising. No one expected this initiative to pass. It was really more of an attempt to get a conversation started, and it's succeeded in that.

As a (tentative) supporter of basic income, I'm already quite happy that something like a fifth to a quarter of voters went for it.

Re: Basic income plan clearly rejected by Swiss voters

#25

Post by tdkl » Sun, Jun 05, 2016, 12:35 PM UTC

_nalply wrote: post #9

tdkl wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry to burst your bubble but direct democracy doesn't work everywhere by default.

And why do you think so?

The majority of population isn't in place to make honest, rational choices unaffected by feelings, culture, religion (I wanted to state educated, but education doesn't necessarily mean that the choice would be on the rational side) and media influence.

Re: Basic income plan clearly rejected by Swiss voters

#26

Post by technofiend » Sun, Jun 05, 2016, 12:35 PM UTC

rubyfan wrote: post #21

elcapitan wrote: post #4

I wish I would live in a country where essential political decisions like that are made by the people and not by some professional political elite in a far away capital.

It's your lucky day, wikiHow has step by step instructions: How to Move to Switzerland http://m.wikihow.com/Move-to-Switzerland

Switzerland is notoriously tough to emigrate to unless you have a great deal of seed capital to start your own business.

Re: Basic income plan clearly rejected by Swiss voters

#27

Post by Inthenameofmine » Sun, Jun 05, 2016, 12:35 PM UTC

Havoc wrote: post #18

_nalply wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The downside are populistic decisions like the Swiss minaret referendum. Now we have the sentence «The construction of minarets is prohibited.» in the constitution. ( https://www.admin.ch/opc/en/classified-compilation/19995395/... ) I think such regulations should be decreed as a law and not as a constitution norm if at all. But if everybody has a say you get bikeshedding in the constitution.

>The construction of minarets is prohibited. Hardly surprising. Nobody wants to be awoken at ungodly hours by that howling.

While I agree about the howling, that was already not allowed. The referendum was only about the physical minarets. Unfortunately the church clocks make just as much noise in Switzerland.

Re: Basic income plan clearly rejected by Swiss voters

#28

Post by _delirium » Sun, Jun 05, 2016, 12:36 PM UTC

_nalply wrote: post #7

elcapitan wrote: post #4

I wish I would live in a country where essential political decisions like that are made by the people and not by some professional political elite in a far away capital.

The downside are populistic decisions like the Swiss minaret referendum. Now we have the sentence «The construction of minarets is prohibited.» in the constitution. ( https://www.admin.ch/opc/en/classified-compilation/19995395/... ) I think such regulations should be decreed as a law and not as a constitution norm if at all. But if everybody has a say you get bikeshedding in the constitution.

California is another example of frequent referenda producing poor governance. Part of the problem is that you accumulate another 1-5 new initiatives every election, none of which are designed to work together; after a few decades you have a big mess of conflicting mandates in the state constitution.

Re: Basic income plan clearly rejected by Swiss voters

#29

Post by rubyfan » Sun, Jun 05, 2016, 12:36 PM UTC

mpitt wrote: post #5

Change the title? It's misleading to imply the results are final.

Pretty clear trend at ~20% across a number of their regions. Unless the uncounted regions are drastically different than the rest of the country I'd say this one is easy to call.

Re: Basic income plan clearly rejected by Swiss voters

#30

Post by elcapitan » Sun, Jun 05, 2016, 12:37 PM UTC

_nalply wrote: post #9

tdkl wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry to burst your bubble but direct democracy doesn't work everywhere by default.

And why do you think so?

I think it's true-ish in the same way that representative democracy doesn't work everywhere either. Many post-communist countries like Russia are an easy example. Obviously the working of a system depends on the social contract being considered legitimate by the population. Concretely this means that for direct democracy to 'work' you'll need a population that has experience and a self-confidence to be the ones that turn up and vote about a bunch of issues they'll need to understand. That's something that can't be implemented overnight. But similarly even representative democracy can't be implemented overnight. That's the dynamic nature of the social contract.

Something I admire about the Swiss btw.