7 ms·

But if the export markets were as rich as Switzerland, they would buy even more luxury watches. So I don't see how your point makes sense. The Swiss model does

But if the export markets were as rich as Switzerland, they would buy even more luxury watches. So I don't see how your point makes sense. The Swiss model does seem to scale. The population has scaled from 6.2 million in 1970 to about 8.2 million today. GDP per capita also went up significantly during this time, and outpaced GDP per capita growth in the USA. You can find a lot of people who write off the Swiss example by just handwaving and saying things like "well it's all stolen money". But the Swiss economy is diversified. The entire financial sector including insurance and pensions is about 10% of the GDP. Private banking is far from the entire financial sector. And in recent years the Swiss have started to give other governments lots of surveillance data on their citizens. You can't get numbered accounts for many many years now, and since FATCA Americans trigger so much reporting that they're being turned away from banks due to the compliance overheads alone. EU governments have benefited from Swiss cooperation too. Still, Switzerland hasn't got poorer since these changes came in. I suspect the reason so many people ignore Switzerland and fail to learn lessons from it is because one of the most obvious and important causes of Swiss wealth is their rather unique system of government. Lots of people in America in the UK are doubting democracy entirely right now. I see totalitarian worldviews put forward quite openly all over the place in these days. The Swiss have a very weak federal government, a rapidly rotating presidency and a vast number of referendums. It leads to a very stable sort of society with few political issues compared to other western countries. Compare to other parts of the world where often apparent stability comes from simply ignoring political problems in the hope that they'll go away, instead of addressing them early.

ci5er 10y ago
> The Swiss model does seem to scale. The population has scaled from 6.2 million in 1970 to about 8.2 million today. GDP per capita also went up significantly during this time, and outpaced GDP per capita growth in the USA. While that is certainly adorable (and, seriously, good for them!), "scale" in GP is referring to: "Will it work for 450M people at the same time?" -- or in China's case: "Will it work for 1.3B people at the same time"? GP posits that in a large liquid world, big enough to support the Ch or SG populations, they will both do well, but that it requires this large external world to pull it off. If the model WAS the external world, it wouldn't.
- drdeca 10y ago
  > adorable Do you mean admirable? I have a hard time thinking of an economy as being adorable, except maybe if the whole thing is very physically small (like, a city of miniscule people, or something like that)
  - stevejb 10y ago
    Switzerland's economy is adorably small. It is approximately 3x the size of LA County, and in there are cheese makers, watch makers, ski chalets, etc. "inspiring great affection; delightful; charming" This seems adorable to me.
  - dgfgfdagasdfgfa 10y ago
    I think it's meant as a diminutive. Also, economies have natural sizes that are not bound to geography; it's rather easy to compare them on any number of characteristics.
  - coldtea 10y ago
    Adorable is used to belittle things -- it's even a meme: “That’s Cute” (otherwise known as “That’s Adorable”) is a sarcastic expression used to patronize or dismiss someone’s self-complacency or boastful statement, similar to the phrase “bitch, please.” It is typically used to juxtapose the capabilities or accomplishments of two comparable subjects
- zigzigzag 10y ago
  That's obviously unknowable, but I present evidence that the model has scaled. I see no reason why China couldn't become as wealthy as Switzerland if it followed the same models (but I doubt it will any time soon).
  - Bartweiss 10y ago
    But I think the claim being made is "scale in size only works with a larger scaling somewhere else". Pointing to growth in Switzerland doesn't do much to argue with the idea that this model only works when you have massive regions with less wealth to absorb exports and services. To simplify absurdly, average global global wealth per person is ~$24,000. If everyone in China had median Swiss wealth, that would be half the world's wealth. If everyone in China had mean Swiss wealth, that would be more wealth than exists in the entire world. So at least in the short term, no. China can't become as wealthy as Switzerland. Global wealth has doubled over the last ~40 years - even if China captured every penny of the next doubling, it would still take >50 years to match Switzerland under any realistic model. Swiss wealth is inescapably a product of inequality, in the sense that there doesn't exist enough wealth to raise everyone to their level.
Strom 10y ago
Before anyone thinks Switzerland is some bastion of democracy, I'd like to point out that they've been very conservative in some areas. Women didn't have federal voting rights until 1971, and received nation-wide local voting rights fairly recently in 1991. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women's_suffrage_in_Switzerland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women's_suffrage_in_Switzerlan...
- santaclaus 10y ago
  There is also a fair amount of xenophobia inherent in the Swiss national identity. I know Germans who have lived there for 10+ years and are still considered outsiders.
  - Malice 10y ago
    Can you name a place that doesn't have that? I've lived in three different (Western) countries and felt the same thing in all of them.
    - gnopgnip 10y ago
      Toronto, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco
      - coldtea 10y ago
        Talk to some immigrants in those places that are not white/asian and/or successful.
    - y4mi 10y ago
      you've lived in three western countries for 10+ years each, and your mother tongue is one of the official languages of the 'foreign' nation?
      - Malice 10y ago
        If I understand your question correctly, then yes.
whyileft 10y ago
Well, I mean it is stolen money. The Swiss I've known have been some of the most thoughtful and intelligent people I've had the pleasure of working with. Just saying that it's probably not the best country to use as an example even if they have done a lot recently to reform their economy away from the banking system.
- zigzigzag 10y ago
  You just proved my point. There is no actual evidence that Switzerland is a good place to live because of "stolen" money - in reality, in the American case, not even slightly stolen money but legitimate money owned by legitimate expats that the US Government somehow believes it owns by birthright. In that case it's America stealing from the Swiss, in fact. There is plenty of evidence that it doesn't matter though, like the fact that the country is still the same even after eliminating all financial privacy rights for non-Swiss. Note that Swiss people still have very strong privacy from the Swiss government by law, a position that puts the Swiss government in a weaker position than most governments are, as tax investigators have much less power. It's only foreigners where the Swiss financial privacy has been dropped. Yet they still manage to make the system work well.
alexbeloi 10y ago
From a fiscal point of view, it's impossible for every country to be a net exporter of goods.
coldtea 10y ago
>But the Swiss economy is diversified. It's easy to be diversified if you funding it with "stolen money" -- or the world's rich banking accounts in any case.

ci5er 10y ago

> The Swiss model does seem to scale. The population has scaled from 6.2 million in 1970 to about 8.2 million today. GDP per capita also went up significantly during this time, and outpaced GDP per capita growth in the USA. While that is certainly adorable (and, seriously, good for them!), "scale" in GP is referring to: "Will it work for 450M people at the same time?" -- or in China's case: "Will it work for 1.3B people at the same time"? GP posits that in a large liquid world, big enough to support the Ch or SG populations, they will both do well, but that it requires this large external world to pull it off. If the model WAS the external world, it wouldn't.

drdeca 10y ago
> adorable Do you mean admirable? I have a hard time thinking of an economy as being adorable, except maybe if the whole thing is very physically small (like, a city of miniscule people, or something like that)
- stevejb 10y ago
  Switzerland's economy is adorably small. It is approximately 3x the size of LA County, and in there are cheese makers, watch makers, ski chalets, etc. "inspiring great affection; delightful; charming" This seems adorable to me.
- dgfgfdagasdfgfa 10y ago
  I think it's meant as a diminutive. Also, economies have natural sizes that are not bound to geography; it's rather easy to compare them on any number of characteristics.
- coldtea 10y ago
  Adorable is used to belittle things -- it's even a meme: “That’s Cute” (otherwise known as “That’s Adorable”) is a sarcastic expression used to patronize or dismiss someone’s self-complacency or boastful statement, similar to the phrase “bitch, please.” It is typically used to juxtapose the capabilities or accomplishments of two comparable subjects
zigzigzag 10y ago
That's obviously unknowable, but I present evidence that the model has scaled. I see no reason why China couldn't become as wealthy as Switzerland if it followed the same models (but I doubt it will any time soon).
- Bartweiss 10y ago
  But I think the claim being made is "scale in size only works with a larger scaling somewhere else". Pointing to growth in Switzerland doesn't do much to argue with the idea that this model only works when you have massive regions with less wealth to absorb exports and services. To simplify absurdly, average global global wealth per person is ~$24,000. If everyone in China had median Swiss wealth, that would be half the world's wealth. If everyone in China had mean Swiss wealth, that would be more wealth than exists in the entire world. So at least in the short term, no. China can't become as wealthy as Switzerland. Global wealth has doubled over the last ~40 years - even if China captured every penny of the next doubling, it would still take >50 years to match Switzerland under any realistic model. Swiss wealth is inescapably a product of inequality, in the sense that there doesn't exist enough wealth to raise everyone to their level.

Strom 10y ago

Before anyone thinks Switzerland is some bastion of democracy, I'd like to point out that they've been very conservative in some areas. Women didn't have federal voting rights until 1971, and received nation-wide local voting rights fairly recently in 1991. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women's_suffrage_in_Switzerland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women's_suffrage_in_Switzerlan...

santaclaus 10y ago
There is also a fair amount of xenophobia inherent in the Swiss national identity. I know Germans who have lived there for 10+ years and are still considered outsiders.
- Malice 10y ago
  Can you name a place that doesn't have that? I've lived in three different (Western) countries and felt the same thing in all of them.
  - gnopgnip 10y ago
    Toronto, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco
    - coldtea 10y ago
      Talk to some immigrants in those places that are not white/asian and/or successful.
  - y4mi 10y ago
    you've lived in three western countries for 10+ years each, and your mother tongue is one of the official languages of the 'foreign' nation?
    - Malice 10y ago
      If I understand your question correctly, then yes.

whyileft 10y ago

Well, I mean it is stolen money. The Swiss I've known have been some of the most thoughtful and intelligent people I've had the pleasure of working with. Just saying that it's probably not the best country to use as an example even if they have done a lot recently to reform their economy away from the banking system.

zigzigzag 10y ago
You just proved my point. There is no actual evidence that Switzerland is a good place to live because of "stolen" money - in reality, in the American case, not even slightly stolen money but legitimate money owned by legitimate expats that the US Government somehow believes it owns by birthright. In that case it's America stealing from the Swiss, in fact. There is plenty of evidence that it doesn't matter though, like the fact that the country is still the same even after eliminating all financial privacy rights for non-Swiss. Note that Swiss people still have very strong privacy from the Swiss government by law, a position that puts the Swiss government in a weaker position than most governments are, as tax investigators have much less power. It's only foreigners where the Swiss financial privacy has been dropped. Yet they still manage to make the system work well.

alexbeloi 10y ago

From a fiscal point of view, it's impossible for every country to be a net exporter of goods.

coldtea 10y ago

>But the Swiss economy is diversified. It's easy to be diversified if you funding it with "stolen money" -- or the world's rich banking accounts in any case.