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

641–650 of 891 posts

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

#641

Post by philipallstar »

tpholland wrote: post #437
philipallstar wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what the exact word is - I wouldn't quite say "culture", as there are clearly different cultural backgrounds at work, but just as with Canada mixing French and Anglo traditions, there is a generally homogenous Western European metaculture at work, premised on the Enlightenment, classical liberalism, the rule of law (and equality of opportunity under the law), freedom of religion, the importance of educat…

Ah, a generally homogenous Western European metaculture then, like that Canada! Thanks for engaging with the specifics of the Swiss Enlightenment you can keep the change

Apologies - I've no idea what you're trying to say.

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

#642

Post by TrappedInCorner »

elektrontamer wrote: post #640

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.

I migrated with my parents at 3 years old to a neighboring EU country from another EU country. I agree with you strongly.

As a migrant myself, I've become very critical about immigration in recent years. I've come to realize just how naive we europeans had become. Also just how penalized the idea of 'I want my country to maintain its culture, and I want my countrymen to look like me, smell like me and behave like me' had become, like it was some sort of a terrible sin to let anyone know you think like this. Thankfully we are waking up to our horrible reality and starting to take measures to fix the problem. Hopefully it is not too late.

Although understandable from a single family or individual perspective, migrating from one EU country to another EU country to escape problems is futile, and you should really try to help fix the country your in, according to what the natives want.

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

#643

Post by khriss »

kuerbel wrote: post #348
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…

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 d…

> the german with a middle management position is however, because quote "they are only hiring other Germans".

Good to see (in a sad way) that some biases are constant across humans.

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

#644

Post by soco »

trgn wrote: post #188

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.

I don't see anything wrong with maintaining the welfare state for the retirees. The retirees are exactly the ones who built Switzerland to be what it is now, including its welfare state. It's a great result but of you don't like it, you are free to build a better one in your own country, with retirees under the bridges if you prefer.

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

#645

Post by pingou »

epolanski wrote: post #606
dmitrygr wrote: post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

https://euromod-web.jrc.ec.europa.eu/research/publications/d...

But this paper is not about extra EU migrants but all migrants. And even then if we control for age they say they are contributing less than natives.

I think it would be very odd that less educated people on average contribute more than natives, especially if they are at risk of being discriminated when looking for a job.

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

#647

Post by lqet »

kuerbel wrote: post #348
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…

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 d…

I am German and live near the Swiss border. My wife is Swiss. I always tell Germans: if you want to get a feeling for the life of an immigrant in Germany, go to a non-touristic region in Switzerland. It's definitely not open hostility, but many little things which quickly give you the impression that you are not welcome and seen as a threat. You are treated differently as soon as you are identified as a foreigner, and this treatment is completely independent of your own behavior.

My wife really enjoys talking to Swiss people in German first (she has no accent anymore), and if the reaction is hostile, she seamlessly switches to full Swiss German in mid-sentence. The reactions are often priceless.

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

#648

Post by inglor_cz »

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…

"We have so much space".

No, you don't have that much space. The entire Switzerland is half the size of Czechia and half of it is taken up by high mountains.

Your cities are already pretty dense. Maybe your threshold for "too many people" is very high, but in general Switzerland doesn't have much free real estate left in/around its urban centers and most people would probably prefer to keep the rural places rural. You could turn your cities into a highrise maze - does the majority of the population want to?

I can fully see where this initiative is coming from. If Czechia was pushing 20 million people, I would consider it on the edge of being overcrowded.

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

#649

Post by garte »

panick21_ wrote: post #296
kuboble wrote: post #132

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 inf…

> 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 e…

^-- This!

There are so many other leavers to pull than this weird and random initiative: stop urban sprawl, extend public transport, curb automobile traffic, extend public spaces, reduce private property rights (Stichwort "Seeanschluss") to name some.

I'm still kind of hoping we're going this way instead of something like this initiative.

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

#650

Post by inglor_cz »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #197
rayiner wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calling it a population cap for something that seems to be about stricter border controls is a wild marketing choice.

That avoids accusations of bigotry which Europe has convinced itself doesn't exist within its domains.

Europeans, with some exceptions (the UK, Germany, maybe Sweden), generally care way, way less about accusations of bigotry than Americans do, and the Swiss are one of the most DGAF nations in this regard.
Post reply on HN