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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

#761

Post by kansface »

soraminazuki wrote: post #526
pstuart wrote: post #521

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People in general tend to be very tribal -- it's in our DNA. When it's about "yay community!" its kinda nice but most the time it's "other tribe bad". I think this is a core to a lot of legislation. Not having a tribe to belong to I find the whole thing simultaneously amusing and horrifying looking in from the outside.

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

I will stake the claim, as an engineer never having studied sociology, that in group favoritism is the (only) stable political arrangement by and large… and further, the preservation of any culture necessitates discrimination of some sort.

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

#764

Post by tastyeffectco »

As a Moroccan who recently moved to the Zurich area of Switzerland with my Swiss wife and kids, we found ourselves settling here for medical reasons and rediscovering a new way of life. When I see this debate, I mostly feel confused. I keep thinking about us as human beings and what drives us, what makes us fear others, or simply makes us uncomfortable. I think this is, and always will be, a human trait: fear of losing what we believe we deserve more than others, fear of change, and fear of competition (even when there isn't any). And I agree—Switzerland is one of the most beautiful countries in the world, with some of the kindest individuals I've ever met.

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

#765

Post by Gormo »

api wrote: post #505
xenonite wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it isn’t racism as Germans had the same skin color. Keep in mind that Germans aren’t stereotypical anymore. In Switzerland live over 41% migrants and children of migrants (just 8.4%). So the native Swiss are not just “surrounded” but greatly diminished.

It wasn’t that long ago that American racists debated whether Italians and even Irish were truly “white.” The definition of white had expanded considerably over the years. Eastern Europeans, Jews (of course), and Russians were also at times not “white.” Maybe we should just keep expanding it. Declare everyone white. Black people are just white people with more melanin. Then we can be racist about aliens from outer sp…

> It wasn’t that long ago that American racists debated whether Italians and even Irish were truly “white.” The definition of white had expanded considerably over the years. Eastern Europeans, Jews (of course), and Russians were also at times not “white.”

This idea is mostly a modern fabrication. Various more granular ethnic biases were of course present throughout American history, but those were never conflated with racial categories: in times and places where the white vs. black racial division was relevant, the ethnic groups you're referencing were always considered "white".

And the types of discrimination that people in white ethnic groups sometimes experienced was of of a type and of a degree vastly different from that experienced by black people. They're really two very distinct phenomena, and weren't evenly distributed throughout the US -- black people in the South had the legacy of slavery, Jim Crow segregation, and other horrifying things to deal with, whereas white immigrant communities in the Northeast or Midwest never experienced anything remotely similar.

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

#766

Post by autoexec »

panick21_ wrote: post #681
autoexec wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that immigration actually is an ecology/sustainability issue. There are economic and cultural effects to immigration as well, and that's what people tend to focus on, but they aren't the only issues to consider. I think every country that has their shit together should be giving serious thought to immigration and sustainability, especially knowing that a massive number of climate refugees are coming in the ne…

Im sure the ecology is much improved by letting people stay where they are and be poorer. In fact we should start to remove people from all rich places so the can live in sustainable poverty.

Leaving those climate refugees where they are wouldn't mean they were poor, it would mean they were dead. There are all kinds of irrational extreme positions that would maximize environmental protection. Certainly the best thing we could do for the environment would be to kill ourselves off, but very few people would argue for that. Instead it's better to go for something more balanced and limiting the number of people coming in your country to an amount the land can sustainably support seems pretty reasonable.

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

#768

Post by lifestyleguru »

greggoB wrote: post #698
lifestyleguru wrote: post #628

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 everyon…

I'm not sure what we're arguing about but suck it up, I'm not moving to Switzerland!

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

#769

Post by sculper »

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

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

[flagged]

If this were the HN of ten years ago, I might have expressed similar sentiments.

Between the comments in this thread though, and the complete lack of moderator attention, I can only come to the conclusion that xenophobia is perfectly fine on HN - provided you couch it in the appropriate rhetoric and don't use any mean words.

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

#770

Post by Gormo »

nailer wrote: post #752
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…

Australian/Brit here. A Sudanese man tried to decapitate someone in the middle of the street in Belfast this morning. I suspect if the UK had better immigration controls this wouldn't have happened.

In Belfast? Was that a Protestant Somali man or a Catholic Somali man?
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