Live data from Hacker News

Switzerland wil have a referendum to cap population at 10M

admin.ch

881–890 of 891 posts

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

#881
post #659

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know people who have been victims from these far-right cultures being brought into my community. I have no tolerance for it. If you wish to call that xenophobia then so be it. I'd highly recommend not visiting places like Afghanistan, not because the weather isn't nice, but because the people are awful. That's not just me saying that either, most Western governments will tell you not to visit either. Perhaps that's…

I too know people who have been victims of the far-right culture that has festered amongst native-born Americans. This country was founded on the idea that we allow competing opinions and ideologies, even those we find distasteful. If people commit actual crimes, we have processes to deal with that.

But why do you feel we should tolerate and import far-right foreign ideologies under some notion of "competition of opinions and ideologies"? I guess I don't understand why I should want that?

Your analogy about native-born Americans doesn't seem relevant here. Obviously there are always going to be issues within our own communities, but surely that doesn't mean we should want to bring people in from foreign communities which we know to hold views that we wouldn't want?

After I left my original comment here the other day it was reported that yet another child in my city was raped by an Afghan "asylum seeker". This isn't simply competition of "opinions and ideologies", it's a social experiment which I'd rather people I care about not have to participate in.

Your ideology in my view tolerates real-world harms because you cannot admit to the fact that not all cultures are equal and some cultures hold horrific views.

I know you're well meaning and I am grateful for your pushback. I genuinely hate talking about this stuff. I know it makes people perceive me in a certain way which is why I'm being flagged for my views while people saying we must be tolerant of far-right individuals are being upvoted. I just know I must try to get through to people because I see the harm this well intentioned ideology is causing.

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

#882
post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain how adding frequency to the train network will not work to compensate higher ridership?

It's not simple with the "clock-face scheduling" system which is used which times the trains to all meet at the big nodes (Zürich, Bern, Basel) so connections work. To achieve this trains are supposed to fit into 30/60/120 minute beats which synchronise the entire system. See [1,2] for how this works. Also many of the most important parts of the system are at capacity. Bigger trains can help but a lot of these gains…

Nonsense. Rail 2035 is already planning on moving to 15min frequency. That increases capacity and makes connectivity better. 30 minute beats are not a law of nature. That's already planned for on the most important lines and could be done for more lines as well. Clearly you have not even spent 5min researching Swiss rail policy. Switzerland literally planning rail policy 20+ years ahead of time.

Rail 2050 plan has many improvements beyond that, and is still in discussion, and we could have many more if politicians were not afraid of large projects. And if parties like SVP would endlessly prevent good projects and instead want more money spend on idiotic highway expansions.

We literally just voted on blocking highway expansion only for the SVP to say 'sure we voted but all these projects should go ahead anyway'. Fucking insane.

They are blaming immigration for the problems their policy causes.

I could continue and give you a long list of bad choices they make that literally make everything worse, only for them to blame immigration. All the buses are full, but we wont allow any bus lanes to exist because car drivers need priority. City is full of cars but can't have people on bikes and use less space because that could mean subsidized parking would go away in a city where few people own cars. The list goes on and on.

Our problems are dumb polices, not immigration. These polices would be fucking dumb even if we did not have migration.

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

#883

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, prof…

> 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.

And I told you that huge parts of the Romanian government budget came from the EU and that has been going on for decades. And what they had to 'pay' for it was to a agree to a set of rules that are beneficial for it as well.

At this point your defense is basically just denial and I can't take you seriously anymore.

Not having Romania would arguably be better for the EU no matter if some companies make ok business in Romania.

And Its also funny how you say 'I never claimed X' when the reality is you claim nothing because if you did you would have to propose an actual alternative, and any alternative you could come up with would be worse. Yes foreign companies are going to make money operating in your country, but that is not neocolonialism other then in your fantasy.

> nothing you get from them ever comes for free

Its almost certain the EU could have received much of the same trade and business benefits without cross-funding such an outrages amount of Romania's government and infrastructure for decades. The EU did that because it is an ideology and not just 'business'. There is a reason people in Germany and Britain were angry at EU, they have been funding much of Eastern European governments for decades. This is a simple fact that is undeniable.

> Later edit:

Romania sent troops to Afghanistan before they were part of NATO.

And NATO Artical 5 does not force you to send troops either. So please stop embracing yourself.

And you can dislike NATO and the American response to a single drone attack, but the US is giving you a nuclear umbrella that many countries would kill to have and many country spend huge parts of their budget on.

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

#884

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.

The answer to immigration, for those that view it as a problem, is to make the places people are leaving more desirable to stay: social welfare, sustainable energy, affordable food and housing, and security - both physical and financial. The US has been trying hard to make itself undesirable for immigrants (suddenly, after decades of turning a blind eye in exchange for cheap labor), instead of focusing on helping to make the living situation in south America more tenable.

It’s kind of what we get for completely wrecking the global south tbh - the number of democracies we overthrew, the drug cartels we propped up, the damage we did is finally coming to bear fruit and it’s just as sour as the soil we tilled.

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

#885
post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There were so many things that I saw growing up as relatively solid but I just happened to grow up in an era of European unity and American primacy European unity works well in a world of mostly-stable populations. Having mass migrations from large, relatively empty countries, to pretty full ones, is going to make the full ones increasingly expensive to make housing for, to power, and to water.

Global freedom of movement was an inalienable right until European colonial powers noticed some of their colonies' peoples wanted to move to Europe. Large scale global movement is indicative of failure to uplift the globe from violence, poverty, and climate change. It makes a lot more sense to me for the global powers who don't want mass migration to do something to fix its causes instead of retreating inward and suc…

We should not fulfill our imagined moral responsibility to the third world if it has real cost to the people already here

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

#886
post #832

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You very clearly did not understand what I wrote, so let's simplify this further. There is one guy alone on an island. There are two lighthouses on the island. Each lighthouse needs an operator to function. The guy operates one of the lighthouses. How much do wages need to rise to get both lighthouses operating at the same time?

None, without people to operate ships there's no need for a light house. If you make up ridiculous hypotheticals you get ridiculous answers.

The scenario was not one person on earth, it was one person on an island. There are plenty of other people who could potentially immigrate to the island.

People also tend to give ridiculous answers when they're wrong.

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

#887

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're truly curious: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_asking_questions But judging by your other recent comments, I suspect that you are not asking this question in good faith.

you must understand that I don't see myself to have bad faith here. I don't see what's stopping people from asking their own questions back instead of waving the finger. why not query me to determine my nature based on my response? making assumptions based on the way I sound, i cant believe that you people dont see the irony, this is how actual racists behave.

TODO perform natural join on concepts of prejudice/categorization, map intersecting behaviours, classify results as positive/negative relative to wider community outcomes, back propagate specific result scores to refine social objectivity circuit ... prioritize acknowledgement of personal fallibility regarding argumentative positions ... gently handle percieved conflicts ... disregard advice regarding validity of querying ...

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

#888
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…

FoM == freedom of movement

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

#889

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Middle class has decided that they don't like competition, they want them gone. Of course they themselves are never the problem Yeah, screw the middle class. What do they know anyway?

I mean there is a tendency for people in the middle class to go all NIMBY and not want additional housing to be built which drives up the cost of housing. It's good that there's a middle class but there are also things that people in the middle class do that aren't good. Like drive f350s on their 40-minute commute to the office.

The middle class can’t afford F350s today.

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

#890
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…

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…

Eeh, not really. German's think because some Swiss resent them a little, it is all about them.

EU countries, especially Italy, Germany and Portugal are the biggest immigration source in Switzerland (EU/EFTA immigration ~60%), Germany is ~13% of the total.

Non EU, especially outside of Eurepean immigration is a smaller part, but if you looked at SVP pamphlets you see a very different picture.

https://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/en/home/statistics/population/m...

Post reply on HN