Comment by fractallyte
6 days ago
It's being proposed in order to maintain quality of life. No one wants to be overcrowded. This is a sane solution: collectively agree on the maximum tolerable population. Then it's down to individual responsibility to obey the norms of one's society.
Edit: unless you're Swiss, your opinion is irrelevant. Swiss voters have a right to decide how they want to live. They're not beholden to EU laws; they can make their own sovereign decisions, and everyone must respect that.
> unless you're Swiss, your opinion is irrelevant
I vote in Switzerland. I’m very much interested in the thoughts and opinions of others on this vote.
I think I'm totally missing the explanation how my quality of life will increase when Swiss products cannot be sold in the EU anymore because of the price hikes and double bureaucracy - including no more cross-border work. Job loss doesn't say much "quality of life", nor does higher prices on imports.
You are assuming there won’t be free trade agreements. People need to stop saying what happened with Brexit will happen with Switzerland. Two completely different countries governed in two completely different ways.
The EU would be really stupid to give you a good deal. Like, for self preservation purposes alone it would be really beneficial if Switzerland would just really suffer after leaving the EEA especially because a lot of shit was going down in Europe and the world after brexit. Can’t really point at the cost of living in the uk and say that’s brexit when petrol is almost 2€ in Germany as well.
But a Switzerland that just collapses surely but surely? That’s gonna send a message.
What products are you thinking? Chocolate and cheese are actually not that relevant as some people want it to be. Gold trade, software, banking however is unlikely to decrease a lot no matter the border rules.
I take this question as a joke, it would be regrettable to know so little about Switzerland yet comment like this. Because more than half of the Swiss exports are chemical and pharma, then come machinery and electronics and... and yeah, food altogether is 3% as well.
Well I _am_ Swiss.
You missed the part where we _voluntarily_ chose to enter into a contract with the EU that does in fact beholden us to EU laws.
We can go back on that contract, but breaking your word is something that people remember for a reason.
Does the contract contain a section on breaking the agreement?
If it doesn’t, a whole lot of European lawyers need to turn in their licenses.
Yes.
And that clause famously includes the breaking of all other contracts.
Maybe not a legally smart move, but morally... when was it signed? Perhaps way before some EU countries decided to stop enforcing their borders beyond the performative level? And since these agreements basically force countries (especially rich countries with socialist systems) to somewhat share the burden of that choice they didn't make, I don't blame them in the least.
These agreements do not force countries to share that burden.
Freedom of movement for EU citizens. Migrants and asylum seekers don’t have the right to live and work in Switzerland because of our EU agreements.
A migrant or asylum seeker living in Germany has 0 right to move to CH.
We do have some asylum obligations from the Dublin accords and from global human rights laws, but those we can regulate ourselves separately anyway. EU doesn’t care. Countries within EU do it already.
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There’s never anything sane with population caps by fiat. If that’s a form of insanity they wish to indulge though, then democracy allows them that.
> There’s never anything sane with population caps by fiat
Why? It’s repressive if done to cap a natively-growing population, since that means government controlling reproduction (à la one-child policy). But government has controlled immigration for generations.
I’m asking as someone who is genuinely on the fence on this vote.
Population Control ≠ Immigration Control.
Saying that you’re going to cap your population necessarily implies you’re going to take policy measures to grow no further than the capped amount, which are by their nature, repressive.
That said I did see in some other comments earlier after I posted this that this is a back door way to axe the Swiss-EU bilateral agreements all at once. I don’t know how true that is, but if that’s the goal, Switzerland doesn’t need to take such a back door approach. Just put it on the ballot like everything else.
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Immigration is being controlled, EU immigrants require a work contract to come here (and consequentially 80% are employed with the rest split between spouses, kids and students). I strongly prefer this system over having some random bureaucrat in Berne decide who is "valuable" and who isn't.
> Why? It’s repressive if done to cap a natively-growing population, since that means government controlling reproduction (à la one-child policy).
There's a point where caping even natively growing population is actually the right move.
There's plenty of overpopulated shitholes (Mumbai, Dhaka, Cairo, Bangladesh, etc) where it would have been an absolute blessing if government was controlling reproduction or put a population cap in place.
If you think capping population is wrong, go visit Dhaka, I highly recommend it.
If you're still on the fence after visiting Dhaka, you're beyond saving.
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> unless you're Swiss, your opinion is irrelevant
Lol. Dude, sure the Swiss can vote however they want. But we all see you and can pass judgement on this thinly veiled anti-immigrant nonsense all day long. Respect it I will never.
Except that it is not EU conform. And won't hold up anyway. Everyone knows this.
Some politicians want to market themselves here.
> Then it's down to individual responsibility to observe the norms of one's society.
That's ok, but Switzerland decided to also partake in many EU regulations, including free movement. They can't cherry-pick individual parts. If they don't want special relations to the EU then that's also fine but the benefits will be gone as well. The UK found this out quite quickly too.
If you increased Switzerland’s population density by 50% they’d be in a crowded hellhole like (checks notes) Belgium
Yeah, but while Belgium is basically a huge plain, Switzerland is 60% Alps.
If you account for that, the effective density of Switzerland on the usable area is 600–700 people/km².
Looks like it’s 380 in the Swiss Plateau (you might be mixing up sq km and sq mi), which puts its at about ~70% of the population density of the Netherlands as a whole.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_Plateau
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There are significant differences in terrain that make that comparison a bit tougher.
But Belgium does suck. I drove from Amsterdam to Paris in the early 2000s, and Belgium stuck out as being obviously worse (dirtier) than the other two.
https://sive.rs/4d
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It’s ludicrous to think that 10 million is the “maximum tolerable population” for Switzerland. This is a racist, isolationist move and an attempt to stir up hatred among the population.