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.
Switzerland wil have a referendum to cap population at 10M
201–210 of 891 posts
Re: Switzerland wil have a referendum to cap population at 10M
#202Earlier quoted context omitted.
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? ...
>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?
Swiss people are perfectly capable of becoming health workers? What kind of argument is this?
Re: Switzerland wil have a referendum to cap population at 10M
#203Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> 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 (à 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.
> Why? It’s repressive if done to cap a natively-growing population, since that means government controlling reproduction (à 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.
Re: Switzerland wil have a referendum to cap population at 10M
#204Absolute dogshit we are voting on this week. Hopefully both gets denied. We are working ourselves into the bleakest future.
Re: Switzerland wil have a referendum to cap population at 10M
#205Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
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.
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
Re: Switzerland wil have a referendum to cap population at 10M
#206Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> 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 (à 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.
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.
Re: Switzerland wil have a referendum to cap population at 10M
#207I'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 sho…
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.
Re: Switzerland wil have a referendum to cap population at 10M
#208Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
most of the immigrants are highly educated professionals, big tech, pharma and meds. it‘s not the „empty“.
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.
Re: Switzerland wil have a referendum to cap population at 10M
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
Calling it a population cap for something that seems to be about stricter border controls is a wild marketing choice.
It is a population cap, you can read this proposal its like 5 lines of text.
No, it's an immigration restriction. There's no way it applies if the Swiss start having 5 kids each.
Re: Switzerland wil have a referendum to cap population at 10M
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you explain how adding frequency to the train network will not work to compensate higher ridership?
It's not simple with the "clock-face scheduling" system which is used which times the trains to all meet at the big nodes (Zürich, 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…
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!"