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Switzerland wil have a referendum to cap population at 10M

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Re: Switzerland wil have a referendum to cap population at 10M

#101

Post by FabCH »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #74
FabCH wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 imm…

> 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 d…

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.

Re: Switzerland wil have a referendum to cap population at 10M

#102

Post by ceejayoz »

soco wrote: post #89
deepspace wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is an utterly meaningless statistic. Canada, with four times the population, ranks #233, because most of the country is uninhabited / uninhabitable.

> That is an utterly meaningless statistic It's very meaningful, when the main argument is population overcrowding.

Read the rest of the post.

Re: Switzerland wil have a referendum to cap population at 10M

#103

Post by JumpCrisscross »

harshalizee wrote: post #90
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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 p…

Counterpoint: Switzerland is rich, peaceful and pretty multicultural. That baseline will keep it as an attractive place to expat or migrate.

Re: Switzerland wil have a referendum to cap population at 10M

#104

Post by gambiting »

transcriptase wrote: post #22
amunozo wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

Re: Switzerland wil have a referendum to cap population at 10M

#105

Post by alephnerd »

ryandrake wrote: post #49
transcriptase wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What happens, specifically? Not that I'm a fan of "population increase forever" but what's wrong with Canada?

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...

Re: Switzerland wil have a referendum to cap population at 10M

#106

Post by Argonaut998 »

soco wrote: post #89
deepspace wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is an utterly meaningless statistic. Canada, with four times the population, ranks #233, because most of the country is uninhabited / uninhabitable.

> That is an utterly meaningless statistic It's very meaningful, when the main argument is population overcrowding.

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

Re: Switzerland wil have a referendum to cap population at 10M

#107

Post by tonfa »

ceejayoz wrote: post #98
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Sure, and I didn't shoot you, I just sent a bullet in your direction.

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)

Re: Switzerland wil have a referendum to cap population at 10M

#108

Post by luke5441 »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #21
ceejayoz wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

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.

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.

Re: Switzerland wil have a referendum to cap population at 10M

#109

Post by JumpCrisscross »

idiotsecant wrote: post #87
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This initiative is a trap. Essentially, it would allow for the termination of bilateral agreements with Europe Or their preëmptive 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.

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.

> 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.

Re: Switzerland wil have a referendum to cap population at 10M

#110

Post by bombcar »

gambiting wrote: post #104
transcriptase wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Pensions are a bit harder to get out of, but healthcare is easy. You never deny, just delay.
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