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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

#821

Post by herbst »

amunozo wrote: post #595
herbst wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not completely irrational. It's a fixed placative number yes. But reality is also we don't produce more food than we already do. More people means more import and it's actually lowering the quality of the available food, making shopping more complicated, etc. And that's just the food quality aspect, what about pensions? Health care? ...

Most of food is imported anyway, Switzerland is a very small country. This is a very silly argument, I'm sorry, it does not make any sense. "making shopping more complicated" what does that even mean. What about pensions? We are talking about foreigners working and paying taxes in Switzerland, a lot of them in very specialized jobs. Health care? A lot of doctors and nurses are foreigners, too. But apart from all thes…

Honestly I don't know import statistics but the majority of food I eat is from Switzerland. A lot of imported products are complicated because they often contain more weird stuff like artificial colouring, sweeteners or thickening stuff.

Familien nachzug is a thing where people can get their elderly parents (or anyone family really) to move to Switzerland a lot more easily. This can indeed add additional costs to the pension and health care system.

The implications with the EU surely could be problematic.

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

#822

Post by joe_mamba »

panick21_ wrote: post #819
joe_mamba wrote: post #795

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you exemplify the freely given unpaid/uncompensated "help" you're referring to? Because with such "help", who needs enemies? Why doesn't US, China or Russia want that type of help?

If you take everything, direct EU money plus other money from governments, foreign investments by companies, remittances from Romanians working in the EU, other aid money that flows in large amounts, not to mention market access and so on. Anybody who rationally without nationalistic blinders evaluates that will come to the same conclusion. The idea that a Romania independent of Europe, with its shitty Post-Communist…

Please don't go on lengthy off-topic rants just to put words in my mouth to disprove things I never claimed.

I never claimed Romania would have been better under Russian than the EU. I just asked you to show me that your claimed "help" they gave to Romania came from a selfless position without any financial strings attached in return for said help, because it wasn't.

Corporations in US, Germany, Austria, France, profited immensely, and still do from their operation in Romania they bought with cents on the Euro/Dollar. In fact, they often make higher profits fleecing consumers and customers in Romania than those in their home countries. EU and NATO accepted Romania because they could profit from them, that's it. I know, I worked for German and Dutch MNCs and saw the numbers coming from their offices across the world. Their offices in Asia and Eastern Europe were bringing in significantly more revenue per worker than those in NL simply because the consumers and workers in those countries get much worse deals than those in NL and Germany. It's basically neocolonialism with extra steps.

That was my point, that EU and NATO orgs are purely business transactional and nothing you get from them ever comes for free, and nothing in your follow-up comments disproved this, you just went on offtopic rants throwing accusations in my direction.

Later edit: also, on the NATO side, many Romanian troops died protecting US interest in Afghanistan, because I guess that's where America's borders are somehow, when they invoked Article 5 after Osama hit NY with two planes. Well in that case, a Russian drone hit us last week. Can US troops now please go die for us by invading Russia? Thanks. No? Well then that's the double standards I was referring to, that we only exist to serve their interests, buy their shit, die for them and that's it. Where is that mythical benevolent "help" you talked about?

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

#823

Post by rayiner »

khriss wrote: post #806
rayiner wrote: post #724

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So, based on your own logic, you would argue for higher prison sentences for whites? Yes. Your report shows that white men are more often given probation, which explains much of the difference. That should stop. Throw those fuckers in prison. Your report also shows that black women received 6% shorter sentences than white women. So there seems to be more at work here than black versus white. We need less discretion…

> That should stop. Throw those fuckers in prison. And yet, if I look at your comment history, you seem hyper focused on discrimination in admissions. I don't see a single instance where you even attempted to advocate for broader elimination of discrimination. It has always been a few narrow instances where whites were on the receiving end.

You’ve got it backwards. There’s 19 million people in college and graduate school, compared to under 2 million people in prison. And my contention is that the discrimination in admissions carries through to the workforce, at least to white collar jobs. There’s 70 million people in white collar jobs.

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

#824

Post by broken-kebab »

soraminazuki wrote: post #692
broken-kebab wrote: post #665

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Did I even write anything about political contents of your signalling? I believe I didn't. I also didn't "reveal" anything particularly bad about you. I said that your urge to ring it is of the same social nature (aka tribal), we (humanity) have been exhibiting for all written and unwritten history, while the message itself expressing that you're above it makes it contradictory in ironic way. No matter what your signal proclaims, the process of tribal-building around it is most certainly divisive[1], with obligatory bit of outwards directed derision. So... then you reacted with suggesting I'm some sort of morally inferior outgroup voice. Which I think, proves the point you have missed.

[1] Which is not always bad. This is core mechanics of our competitive adaptiveness probably. It's just that being more aware of this gives us a chance to be better in more universal terms with other humans. Including in politics, of course.

P.S. If you felt offended, sorry! I can't say I care too much ngl, it's the internet after all, but it wasn't my intention either. I also didn't downvote you.

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

#825

Post by mike_hearn »

eqvinox wrote: post #820
mike_hearn wrote: post #809

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Economic data.

That's not an answer. Raw data is useless without interpretation. There's a myriad of other things affecting economic development, which need to be compensated for. Or does your "raw data" have a column for "growth deficit due to Brexit" showing 0?

Just compare the British economy with that of France, or its own prior trajectory. Very similar economies, neighbours, one stayed in and the other left. France establishes there was no unexpected growth surge Britain missed out on. Continuing on the prior trajectory establishes there was no direct negative impact from leaving. Put them together and there's your answer.

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

#826

Post by like_any_other »

amunozo wrote: post #727
mike_hearn wrote: post #654

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

It's also a much smaller economy and Switzerland, unlike the UK, is landlocked and surrounded by EU countries. More than half of its exports go to the EU. Switzerland needs the EU more than the EU needs Switzerland.

European countries have traded with each other long before EU free movement. In fact, most countries today, EU or not, manage to trade just fine despite strict borders.

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

#827

Post by fractallyte »

lukan wrote: post #700
fractallyte wrote: post #636

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You're basically reluctant to accept the fact that such a calculation is possible. That says more about you than the competence of mathematicians and ecologists...

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

#828

Post by khriss »

rayiner wrote: post #823
khriss wrote: post #806

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That should stop. Throw those fuckers in prison. And yet, if I look at your comment history, you seem hyper focused on discrimination in admissions. I don't see a single instance where you even attempted to advocate for broader elimination of discrimination. It has always been a few narrow instances where whites were on the receiving end.

You’ve got it backwards. There’s 19 million people in college and graduate school, compared to under 2 million people in prison. And my contention is that the discrimination in admissions carries through to the workforce, at least to white collar jobs. There’s 70 million people in white collar jobs.

Agreed, but wouldn't you also say that being in prison has an arguably greater impact in later life?

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

#829

Post by eqvinox »

mike_hearn wrote: post #825
eqvinox wrote: post #820

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not an answer. Raw data is useless without interpretation. There's a myriad of other things affecting economic development, which need to be compensated for. Or does your "raw data" have a column for "growth deficit due to Brexit" showing 0?

Just compare the British economy with that of France, or its own prior trajectory. Very similar economies, neighbours, one stayed in and the other left. France establishes there was no unexpected growth surge Britain missed out on. Continuing on the prior trajectory establishes there was no direct negative impact from leaving. Put them together and there's your answer.

Surely, somebody else has done that and either posted about it or even submitted an academic paper in some economy journal. Do you have any links?

[Ed.: nevermind, https://ukandeu.ac.uk/brexits-impact-on-the-uk-economy/ does what you described & it very much indicates an economic impact. You'll of course claim it's biased. Feel free to back that up with your own links to analysis.]

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

#830

Post by toasty228 »

garte wrote: post #652
TrappedInCorner wrote: post #642

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'…

This does not make sense. How can you differentiate between "good" migrants (apparently you yourself) and "bad" ones? Shouldn't you remove yourself because you're a migrant to increase the quality of life for the "natives"?

Start by kicking out criminals and people who entered illegally and 90% of the "anti immigration" people will be perfectly happy. We don't even apply the laws that already exist, it really is that simple
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