Comment by SllX

6 days ago

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.

    • It was put on ballot as such, and overwhelmingly (by Swiss standards) rejected. Now it's time for trying different backdoors (not the first try either). It's a constant circus, EU and the EU citizens being the demon eating at the Swiss well-being.

  • 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.