321–330 of 423 posts
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A paradise for identity theft
Requiring strong ID verification (from government ID or the digital ID we're discussing) helps protect against identity theft. Other countries I've lived in that use very weak forms of ID ("a utility bill in your name") seem like much bigger paradises for identity theft.
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Yep it's definitely a cultural thing. I think it really is mostly to suppress women and not as a way one shows their religion which one does by living and not by clothing.
Historically, the veil was considered a huge step forward for women's rights/freedoms as it allowed them to leave the house more than three times in their life. Before that, they left the house to marry and move from their father's home to their husband's and when they died....and maybe I am misremembering that number of "three times" or maybe I just can't remember the third instance. (I'm a woman. I've had a college…
Which totally misses the point. You shouldn't have been importing burqua if women were already were allowed to go outside without it.
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Yep it's definitely a cultural thing. I think it really is mostly to suppress women and not as a way one shows their religion which one does by living and not by clothing.
Historically, the veil was considered a huge step forward for women's rights/freedoms as it allowed them to leave the house more than three times in their life. Before that, they left the house to marry and move from their father's home to their husband's and when they died....and maybe I am misremembering that number of "three times" or maybe I just can't remember the third instance. (I'm a woman. I've had a college…
It's kinda sad that so many supported this and I'm happy that this wide ban would (probably...) be unconstitutional in Germany.
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Historically, the veil was considered a huge step forward for women's rights/freedoms as it allowed them to leave the house more than three times in their life. Before that, they left the house to marry and move from their father's home to their husband's and when they died....and maybe I am misremembering that number of "three times" or maybe I just can't remember the third instance. (I'm a woman. I've had a college…
Point is, islam was a progressive religion. But many countries took it in as a regressive one since they were also taking in customs from the culture which islam was supposed to progress. Which totally misses the point. You shouldn't have been importing burqua if women were already were allowed to go outside without it.
Additionally, one way to spread religion is to be tolerant of the existing culture of the people you are hoping to spread the religion to. This is Christianity is associated with a lot of holidays that have seemingly inane and random traditions, such as Easter and Easter Bunnies and hiding Easter eggs.
What on earth do bunnies and hiding eggs have to do with each other, much less the risen Christ? Not much, but it's some pagan set of traditions that got tolerated by the Christian church and that's how you have bunnies and hidden eggs all wrapped up with the risen Christ.
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i disagree wholeheartedly in that it is more cooperative. Switzerland is anything but cooperative. But that's what makes this country so great. We take our divisions, within cantons, and leverage them for positive externalities to (accidentally) benefit the greater good. In CH, every very canton sets their own citizenship policy. Its not a coincidence. Did you hear about the woman that's been living in Zug, and been…
>So, while spain sends soldiers to die in Afghanistan, or the UK wastes decades of development on a grand EU project, or US citizens get spied on by their own govt via Patriot Act.... CH is just sitting pretty, doing its thing. Arguing about every little detail to exhaustion. Switzerland can afford to do this because it's surrounded by countries that protect it from the real world. It doesn't have a real foreign poli…
They remain independent because they are a mountainous country that set its defenses up cleverly so that any invasion would be a pyrrhic victory at best.
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> buying an uninhabitable toxic dump is actually cheaper Considering I'm in the bay area, land alone is actually expensive here so that doesn't really work. Is there any way to buy this unhabitable dump in a remote area and have the mail picked up and delivered to me? Are there any businesses doing this?
Is there any scenario in which you would need to receive mail to that address?
I'm not sure how you'd deal with vehicle licensing. In WA, all the paperwork I've received has been marked "Do Not Forward".
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It has its advantages and disadvantages. It is also the political system that caused this: "In 1991 following a decision by the Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland, Appenzell Innerrhoden (AI) became the last Swiss canton to grant women the vote on local issues." Notice how it was a court decision, not a result of the political process. I'd say 1991 is a bit too late to have full voting rights for women. https://en.w…
How can you so sure that your ideal is how they should live? What I admire about the Swiss is how they live and let live - they may disagree with the neighbour, but let them be.
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>So, while spain sends soldiers to die in Afghanistan, or the UK wastes decades of development on a grand EU project, or US citizens get spied on by their own govt via Patriot Act.... CH is just sitting pretty, doing its thing. Arguing about every little detail to exhaustion. Switzerland can afford to do this because it's surrounded by countries that protect it from the real world. It doesn't have a real foreign poli…
Switzerland used to be surrounded by Nazi Germany on pretty much all sides. They remain independent because they are a mountainous country that set its defenses up cleverly so that any invasion would be a pyrrhic victory at best.
Nazi Germany did not invade Switzerland, because Switzerland was actually more useful as a neutral state for Nazi Germany to exchange gold for commodities, for spying and Switzerland produced militiary equipment for Nazi Germany anyway.
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How can you so sure that your ideal is how they should live? What I admire about the Swiss is how they live and let live - they may disagree with the neighbour, but let them be.
Actually at the same votation, Switzerland accepted a law which forbid women to wear Burka. Which is not exactly let live.
Firstly "accepting a law" implies - in western liberal democracies - a legislative process in which a law is proposed and accepted by some kind of parliament. This is not what happened here - in Switzerland, laws can be given to the population directly by non-parliamentary, non-governmental organisations in referenda, which then become binding. The law you are referring to was accepted by the general Swiss population with about 51% of the votes yesterday.
2. The law is not specifically forbidding women particularly forbidding to wear burkas. It forbids anyone to hide their faces when in public (with the exceptions of traditional customs, e.g. during carnival season). The basic idea behind this is that in a free society, we meet each others face to face. This generally good idea was abused by right-wingers to point out that this prevents visible Islamisation of an ultimately christian-conservative country, and by left-wingers to imply it was sexist and islamophobic.
3. Men and women can still wear whatever they like ... in private. In public, all societies have acceptable clothing standards. Try going out wearing nothing but three straps of leather and a gimp mask in front of a school, anywhere in the world, and see what happens.
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In Sweden we have a company running the ID system and that works fine. The company is coowned by all the large banks afaik. I was really surprised at how far behind Switzerland is compared to Scandinavia when it comes to digitalisation. Being able to handle my life hassle free online instead of going to physical places (like post office, banks, gov office) is liberating. I also get all my bills digitally and all my r…
I think pride and patriotism means you’re overstating your case here. Indeed as you say, a subgroup of the largest Swedish private banks own the ID system in Sweden - for profit, and without any serious democratic oversight. Edit: I forgot to add that the system allows these private banks to see into almost every aspect of a person’s life: where they shop, where they are , who shares their household and so on. Almost…
My gripe with BankID is that it's a monopoly and it's tied to having a bank account. It's easy to fall into the cracks. For example, I know first hand more than one foreigner that moved to Sweden and couldn't do basically anything online because they didn't have BankID and couldn't get one because they needed to visit a bank branch and have an appointment, and they couldn't get one without having to wait for 2 months or more (partly due to COVID-19).
The system could be much better if there were many accredited providers of digital ID (this is somewhat already the case, there's Freja now) and there was a mandated standard protocol that the accredited providers implement, so you could have the ID from any provider and that ID would work on any site. The latter is not the case to the best of my knowledge: although many government websites are supporting Freja, most private ones like Kivra or Klarna and of course the banks only support BankID. This is not great.
It also forces you to have an Android or iPhone, and basically have a relationship with these foreign tech giants and accept their policies in order to be a "digital citizen" in your own country. If they ban your account for any reason, and you lose access to the store without any recourse, and you can't install the app, you are basically SOL. This is a trickier problem to solve, and it's not exclusive to BankID by any means, but if there was competition it would be more likely (at least on paper) that somebody might provide an alternative.
My take is that indeed: the system mostly works, it is convenient, but it's not perfect by any means. There's plenty of room for improvement. Just having real competition instead of a de facto monopoly would fix most issues.