Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Switzerland wil have a referendum to cap population at 10M

admin.ch

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

631–640 of 891 posts

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

#631

Post by stymaar »

mschuster91 wrote: post #409
ahartmetz wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

> 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.…

> France was historically always focused on Paris, because that was where the Emperor was.

So much misconception in such a short sentence…

First of all France only had an “Emperor” for a few decades (10 years for Napoléon 1er, 17 for Napoléon III).

Then, Paris wasn't even the King's main residence for a good part of French Monarchy (the Loire valley (hence the list of famous castles here) and Versailles both aren't Paris).

Centralization around Paris built up progressively, but it's really the French revolution (which came with the suppression of the old regional Parliaments) which made modern France the way it is. And the US is the only place where you can claim that 200 years of history counts as “always”.

As I said in a comment sibling to yours, this has nothing to do with political organization, it's a consequence of demography: French people just stopped having babies one century before other European countries (and two centuries before the rest of the world).

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

#632

Post by atemerev »

unbrice wrote: post #322
atemerev wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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).

The threshold is actually 9.5M, and we are at 9.1M already.

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

#633

Post by fractallyte »

ninjagoo wrote: post #553
fractallyte wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> 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

I counter you with soil degradation, which is gradual (over decades, even centuries), and extremely difficult to reverse (millennia).

We may yet discover that Malthus was right.

Then what??

https://eu.boell.org/en/SoilAtlas-soil-degradation

https://earth.org/95-of-the-earths-soil-on-course-to-be-degr...

https://www.fao.org/about/meetings/soil-erosion-symposium/ke...

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

#634

Post by frm88 »

rayiner wrote: post #551
istjohn wrote: post #540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fringy parts like the POTUS?

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.

There are no descendants of the Chinese railroad workers to deport, because that was already done in 1882: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Exclusion_Act

https://www.npr.org/sections/planet-money/2024/11/19/g-s1-34...

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

#635

Post by aprilthird2021 »

ab5tract wrote: post #611
aprilthird2021 wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 bett…

You would think that such a terrible, untenable, broken economy as I hear the Japanese economy described (oh no, it’s not growing fast! The horrors of checks notes equilibrium) would precipitate a very dirty landscape, vast swathes of nature torn down, civility breakdowns, mass homelessness, and a high murder rate, bridges collapsing out of nowhere, etc. I’ve just described some famously “excellent economy” countries…

Instead of those things, Japan has extremely high suicide rates, extremely low rates of coupling, extremely low rates of family formation, extremely high rates of loneliness, etc.

It's a place with no economic growth prospects, where you have to work far longer than people in other developed nations, and where your chance of companionship and having your own family is the lowest it can possibly be in the world.

But at least it's clean

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

#636

Post by fractallyte »

lukan wrote: post #279
fractallyte wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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)

This is covered in the linked article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrying_capacity#Mathematics

Other variables to factor in would include cultural/esthetic ones: how much would a population tolerate a reduction in the idyllic/scenic nature of their landscape, merely to accommodate crops for a rising population?

(This is what I referred to as "quality of life" in another post.)

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

#637

Post by antonvs »

j_maffe wrote: post #417
joe_mamba wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> Maybe the solution is not more EU, but less EU. You haven't given a single reason why that would be beneficial.

It’s a variation on the politician’s syllogism: we must do something different, this is something different, therefore we must do this.

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

#638

Post by hocuspocus »

pjmlp wrote: post #630
hocuspocus wrote: post #626

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Schengen is not FoM. Visa isn't an acronym. And CERN workers are on diplomatic permits anyway.

Lost me on the reply.

You're throwing a lot of words that you don't understand nor have much relevance to the topic.

Before bilateral agreements and the freedom of movement, not Schengen which was ratified much later and is completely irrelevant here, you needed a work permit, not a visa (lowercase), which anyway at CERN is the equivalent of a diplomatic permit given to all international and tax-exempt NGOs in Geneva/Switzerland. And of course you lose your CDL permit quickly after your contract expires.

Getting a B permit before FoM would specifically not have been as hard for you as for someone from another continent.

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

#639

Post by junior44660 »

kamaal wrote: post #560
bapo wrote: post #146

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 ar…

As a Indian I envy you. My whole life has been a struggle for living in places where there could be fewer humans.

In one of the religious texts, the supreme god Indra says "man acquires sin by living amongst humans, and ward it off by wandering in faraway places (void of humans)". Not far off to think that Indians have always had this trauma due to population.

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

#640

Post by elektrontamer »

I always dreamt of migrating to some european country but seeing their suicidal policy of importing the worst from all over the world I've completely abandoned the idea.

If this passes maybe there is some hope after all.

Note: In case anyone wants to exclaim xenophobia or some other nonsense I'm also part of the "xenos". So no it's not xenophobic to want your country to be safe and prosperous.

Post reply on HN