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Swiss voters reject proposal to cap population at ten million

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Re: Swiss voters reject proposal to cap population at ten million

#131

Post by collinmcnulty »

brightbeige wrote: post #68

Recent, related New Yorker article that goes into the background leading up to the vote https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/06/15/could-switzerl... Despite the prosperity, many Swiss had mixed emotions about the guest workers, who came largely from Southern Europe. As the Swiss novelist Max Frisch observed, “We wanted workers, but we got people.”

As Terry Pratchett put it in Carpe Jugulum:

> And sin, young man, is when you treat people as things. Including yourself. That’s what sin is.

Re: Swiss voters reject proposal to cap population at ten million

#132

Post by kgwgk »

FabCH wrote: post #118
kgwgk wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are 40k naturalisations each year (a similar number relative to population as in the US). Around 13% of the Swiss citizens have acquired the nationality via naturalisation (8% in the US).

How many of those were born in CH? How many people born in CH never become Swiss? Because for the US, that number is ~0%. And before you say: "well the US have different rules", well, ok, but then don't compare us to the US on the other number either, compare us to other EU countries with similar types of rules but different implementations. CH has stricter naturalization laws than many EU countries and CH has mandat…

> How many of those were born in CH?

About one third. That would bring the fraction of naturalised foreign-born citizens in line with the US (which is also a kind-of-hard place to get citizenship, that's true).

> CH has mandatory military service which discourages many males from naturalizing

That doesn't make it difficult, it makes it undesirable and suggests that many people could get it but choose not to.

Re: Swiss voters reject proposal to cap population at ten million

#133

Post by kuerbel »

aranelsurion wrote: post #105
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Only if Berlin starts handing out German passports do they dictate EU immigration single-handedly Fair enough and great point. It’s incredibly hard to naturalize in Switzerland. Less so in Germany. (Though still much harder than in America, at least based on my American friends who naturalized there and this Swiss of Indian and Germanic origin who naturalized in America.) It’s fair for those countries to want to ma…

> It’s incredibly hard to naturalize in Switzerland. Less so in Germany Is it? Asking out of curiosity, from a cursory look both countries require self-sufficiency, language (in fact Switzerland looks a little easier on this), no criminal background, an integration test to be taken (and both seem easy) and time in the country. Only major difference seems to me is Germany takes 5 years in paper (more like 6-7 in reali…

In Switzerland they are voting on naturalisation... which means you are at the whim of people living in the same place. If you don't fit in you'll have a hard time, if they don't like you for whatever reason etc, wrong hair colour, you name it. In Germany it's an administrative act with clear demands.

Re: Swiss voters reject proposal to cap population at ten million

#134

Post by mfuzzey »

Interesting that those supporting the motion claimed it was because there was no space left for new arrivals and that it put too much pressure on infrastructure like trains and yet the largest support came from the countryside which proably has less overcrowding and the cities were greatly against it.

Makes me think that "overcrowding" wasn't thre real reason...

Re: Swiss voters reject proposal to cap population at ten million

#135

Post by vladms »

phendrenad2 wrote: post #58

I don't get why they would want to do this, when runaway depopulation is the biggest issue facing the world. We're at a point where (I think, controversially) we need to sanction (or more) nations that aren't increasing their population annually. This is an existential threat facing the human race.

30 years ago there were many with the idea "runaway population increase is the biggest issues".

It would be wise to have some pro-natality policies here and there, but look at China what happens if you go all "existential threat" on this issue. Biology is not engineering, things evolve differently than what one wants (there are other examples of strong natality policies fails).

Re: Swiss voters reject proposal to cap population at ten million

#136

Post by leejo »

blockmarker wrote: post #116
Biganon wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing. It was an initiative to limit immigration, by a xenophobic party. They don't give a damn if you have 13 children, they don't want brown people in Switzerland.

27% of Swiss residents were born outside the country. Can there ever be a limit to immigration, or will it always mean you are literally Hitler and want to exterminate millions?

> 27% of Swiss residents were born outside the country.

Swiss nationality is not linked to your birth country, it is linked to lineage. There are second, third, (fourth, fifth, sixth?) generation immigrants in Switzerland that are not Swiss. Conversly, there are Swiss nationals that have never set foot in Switzerland.

Re: Swiss voters reject proposal to cap population at ten million

#137

Post by optimalsolver »

Saline9515 wrote: post #127
mrtksn wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that’s the dilemma of the rich countries. They want their life be taken care by the people they don’t want around and if they have to have them around they want them be the kids from people from their kind but not theirs. It’s a special kind of NIMBY, not necessarily xenophobia. More like a class thing, they want other rich people’s kids do the shitty jobs so they don’t have to have these poor people doing the j…

They don't want their son to do it because immigrants prevent the salaries of those jobs to rise naturally. Mass immigration is capitalism's answer to the Baumol law. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol_effect The "locals don't want to do those jobs" comptemptuous rethoric of the bourgeois left has always been false, locals don't want to clean the sewers for the minimal wage, but will do it for a proper salary. My g…

I find it hard to believe the kids of the Swiss elite would be cleaning sewers if not for the low pay.

Re: Swiss voters reject proposal to cap population at ten million

#138

Post by mrtksn »

Saline9515 wrote: post #127
mrtksn wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that’s the dilemma of the rich countries. They want their life be taken care by the people they don’t want around and if they have to have them around they want them be the kids from people from their kind but not theirs. It’s a special kind of NIMBY, not necessarily xenophobia. More like a class thing, they want other rich people’s kids do the shitty jobs so they don’t have to have these poor people doing the j…

They don't want their son to do it because immigrants prevent the salaries of those jobs to rise naturally. Mass immigration is capitalism's answer to the Baumol law. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol_effect The "locals don't want to do those jobs" comptemptuous rethoric of the bourgeois left has always been false, locals don't want to clean the sewers for the minimal wage, but will do it for a proper salary. My g…

Why don’t you let people decide who works with who in a free market and if you are worried about low wages introduce higher minimum wages.

Or, what I actually prefer is face who you are and say I don’t want those people who are a generation or two behind in wealth? Why the gymnastics? As if there are people pf your kind who would have done these jobs but they are just sitting around or doing rocket science because the pay is %15 lower than what they desire.

Just ridiculous.

Re: Swiss voters reject proposal to cap population at ten million

#140

Post by true_religion »

vladms wrote: post #120
geremiiah wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me it seems like EU countries are independently embarking on the Canada-policy of importing a whole bunch of South East Asians and Latin Americans. From Hungary to Ireland, you see the same trend. Part of it is by economic necessity. For example finding nursing staff is very challenging and you have to compete with the US and Australia and other rich countries. But part of it doesn't make much sense. We really don…

> We really don't need to import any kind of engineers from outside I was involved in a startup in the Netherlands. We tried to recruit Dutch people, all wanted safe 9-5 jobs where they would know what they would do in 1-2 years. A startup can not guarantee that. We ended up with most engineers foreigners, many (but not all) that have studied there. So I would say that it is also risk and opportunity related. Someone…

I guess the question for society is: do we want businesses who cannot pay domestic workers a fair wage to exist in our country? Or do we want them to exist elsewhere and we import those products?

To society a startup with a 99%% chance of failing to IPO is no different from a sweatshop which also wants skilled but cheap labor.

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