2 ms·

Here in Switzerland, we have direct democracy, with referendums every two months. Some bad decisions were taken, but most of them are easily reversed when prove

• hinkley 10y ago
  In the case of the U.K., it's news to absolutely no one that there are some fundamental and ancient grudges between regions. Voting on things for spite isn't entirely out of the realm of possibilities. It is a common complaint that Europeans have no grasp of how goddamned big the US is, and make "helpful" suggestions to fix our problems with solutions that simply don't scale with geography. It's a big place full of people who either came here to be left alone, or were kicked out of Europe because they wouldn't leave other people alone. People sort themselves and there's plenty of physical and emotional space for echo chambers if you want them. Neighboring states are not as different as neighboring countries, but we have 50 of them and among those you can find two that completely disagree with each other on nearly every topic you can imagine. If Europe voted that Switzerland should pay off the Spanish national debt, I bet you'd be pretty pissed. If they tried to take your guns, you'd probably start loading. Hell, even Roman politicians had things to say about the ways a straight democracy can go bad. Bread and circuses.
  • atemerev 10y ago
    Switzerland is not a part of European Union. And Germans were paying for Greek debts more than once. (US is no exception; banks bailouts were paying for someone else's debts. The difference is most banks returned bailout money when things got better, though; good luck with that in the case of Greece).