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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

#691

Post by panick21_ »

joe_mamba wrote: post #149
skywhopper wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their neighbors were similarly restrictive back then, and the European economy was not as integrated.

> 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…

Yeah lets compare the world now to a world pre rise of Japan, East Asia and China. Im sure less European imtegration would have resulted in Euro dominance continuing.

I agree more bilateral agreements are good but having even more fragmented markets is not and was not a long term model of sucess.

It was simply easier back then, less competition.

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

#692

Post by soraminazuki »

broken-kebab wrote: post #665
soraminazuki wrote: post #526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still can't believe we have hundreds of years of documented history to learn from, yet human intelligence is still blinded by bigotry.

The irony is that virtue-signalling (which your comment certainly is) is a shared identity declaration. Which is a part of the same inherent human predisposition to form groups which we call "tribalism" when we like to don't like it.

That's called the paradox of tolerance and it's not the gotcha that you think it is. If you think "mankind should overcome bigotry" is such a divisive statement that it splits people into "tribes," that reveals more about you than it does about me.

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

#693

Post by deaux »

jansport123 wrote: post #382
kuerbel wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

seems to be a common concern amongst the local population everywhere "X identity is hiring only X identity"

Because it is real, and there _is_ in fact a large difference in the propensity to do this across cultures.

This post is about Switzerland, and as said by parent a lot of this is about Germans in Switzerland.

Are Germans in Switzerland more prone to hiring another German rather than a French person, or Swiss person? I'm sure that such bias exists. But that bias is nothing compared to e.g. tendency for Indians to hire other Indians. Now of course some of this can be explained by economic opportunity. The extra benefit Germans can provide to other Germans by giving them Swiss job is smaller than for Indians.

However that only explains part of it. If that was all, then Chinese people should bias much more to hiring fellow countrymen than Japanese and Korean people, while the latter two should be similar to each other. This is definitely not the case (note that we're talking about immigrants here, not 2nd+ generation).

I'm sure there's been research on this subject, and there will be some cultural trait that proxies for how much immigrants from country X bias towards hiring others from X.

I can even give you a proxy for funsies: embassies. Look at the employees at the embassy of country X in country Y. How many of them are from country X and how many are from Y? Now compare that across embassies. You'll see a lot of similarities with what I've sketched. Sometimes you'll see that both the embassy of country X in country Y, as well as that of country Y in country X (the other direction), are both primarily staffed by people from country X! In those cases it's common that country X has a much stronger bias than Y towards hiring people from their own nationality rather than based on aptitude.

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

#694

Post by deaux »

alephnerd wrote: post #466
diath wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These jobs are unpopular because the pay is shit, not because people don't want to do them, the government could simply have grants/bonus program for people employed in these positions so that the taxpayer money directly funds the bettering of the society and environment around them. Besides, Japan is a good real world example that you do not need to lean on immigrant labor to stop your country from becoming "dirty";…

> Japan is a good real world example that you do not need to lean on immigrant labor to stop your country from becoming "dirty" Japan heavily utilizes foreign workers via a Gulf style guestworker program, and even that has led to the far-right Sanseito becoming Japan's highest rated opposition party and the far-right wing of the LDP winning internal party politics.

> via a Gulf style guestworker program

They get to keep their passports and can return any time, calling it Gulf-style is a bit much. There are abuses - so are there in Europe - but it's not like they sacrificed a thousand or so immigrant worker lives on the Tokyo Olympics in Qatar 2022 style.

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

#695

Post by elch »

whazor wrote: post #677
mike_hearn wrote: post #656

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wasn't catastrophic to the British economy. Why would Switzerland be so different?

Most British people think Brexit is a failure. For Switzerland it would be significantly worse since they are surrounded by Germany, France, Italy, and Austria. So all trucks would be stopped at border. Food prices are already super expensive and this would make it worse.

Prices are not an issue for Switzerland, given that the tariff on pork from Germany, for example, is 347 CHF per 100 kg.

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

#696

Post by deaux »

stouset wrote: post #286
kypro wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

[flagged]

They're partially right, some cultures are awful by any common usage of the word. The problem of course is that they're dogwhistle implying that this means all Afghan asylum seekers must be part of such cultures and therefore must be awful, which is of course not true.

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

#697

Post by tpm »

mike_hearn wrote: post #661
tpm wrote: post #605

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EU didn't break any agreement. > the Swiss are to be the recipient of some draconian action "we'll show them" It's quite clear that the EU-Swiss agreements were negotiated as a whole and one side just can't suddenly pick parts of it that it will reject.

Sure it did. Spain just gave 500,000 "undocumented migrants" a residence permit. They can now freely move throughout the continent. That sort of act was never envisioned when the Swiss agreed to FoM with the EU, which for most of its history was used only by a tiny minority of people all of whom had a similar culture. The EU/Swiss agreements don't have to be negotiated as a whole. The whole guillotine clause schtick…

What EU-Switzerland agreement was broken by the EU by this action of Spain? And please do be exact which one and how. Otherwise stop telling lies.

> Nothing stops European countries being reasonable and looking for ways to work with each other on whatever areas they can agree; it's a deliberate ideological choice to refuse.

Yes, and it's the fine and reasonable ideology of protecting your own (in this case EU members') interests against the interests of other countries. Which is why neither the UK nor Switzerland nor other non-members can pick and choose. Makes them understandably unhappy of course, but so what? They are protecting their interests and we are protecting ours.

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

#698

Post by greggoB »

lifestyleguru wrote: post #628
greggoB wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not at all reflected in the immigration numbers: ot has one of the highest proportional rates of immigration in Europe, and the brain drain of top talent from neighbouring countries has actually been a point of moral finger-wagging. Want to try again?

Then set the population limit and take the best of the best only. Go for it. Being so popular nothing can go wrong just like your most reputable bank cannot bankrupt, right?

1. Switzerland is a highly desirable location fo skilled workers to migrate to. Don't hate the player, hate the data.

2. Setting a population limit (especially in the manner proposed) would obviously have a negative effect on (1). I think most in this thread agree with that assessment, so not much to gain from yelling at us, no?

3. Credit Suisse being CH's most "reputable" bank would be news to... pretty much everyone? [0]

If you have a hate-boner for the country, that's yours to have, but maybe go somewhere else to deal with that.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_Suisse#Reputation_and_r...

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

#699

Post by deaux »

wat10000 wrote: post #423
yonaguska wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could have fled for any number of reasons- that doesn't mean that they aren't exactly in sync with the culture they are coming from. And even if they aren't in sync with the culture they are fleeing- they very likely still hold radically different values than you. I met a man from Afghanistan sometime last year, however, once we got past the introductions and realized we shared things in common- he opened up to…

I’ve had that experience as well, except instead of Afghanistan it was America, and instead of Sharia law it was Biblical law. I am far more afraid of certain of my native-born countrymen than I am of people who come here.

That makes perfect sense. But clearly Switzerland, unlike America, barely has any proponents of Sharia-like Biblical law. This is a large cause of misunderstanding in threads like these by fellow Americans. Because the US has very similar people at home, it just looks like "potentially a little more of something there's already lots of, they'll never outgrow that existing group anyway, what are they even complaining about".

I've upvoted you because it's a relevant point.

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

#700

Post by lukan »

fractallyte wrote: post #636
lukan wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

That math is about animals in a fixed climate who don't do trading. Swiss people do.

And that "how much would a population tolerate a reduction in the idyllic/scenic nature of their landscape" is a very arbitary factor that will strongly depend on who you ask.

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