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Just a great example of direct democracy: In Switzerland you can meet the politicians on the street, in the tram, in the local pub and since you have always the
by s3nnyy 9y ago
Just a great example of direct democracy: In Switzerland you can meet the politicians on the street, in the tram, in the local pub and since you have always the theoretically the possibility to punch them in the face, you can really say that they have skin in the game.
I think such projects put even more of their skin in the game. Thanks for building it! (content marketing: if you want to move here, I am a tech recruiter hunting for engineers - my e-mail is in my HN-profile)
- skummetmaelk 9y agoYou can do this is most small countries.
- s3nnyy 9y agoIn Germany politicians drive around in bullet-proof BMW/Mercedes.
- mieseratte 9y agoIs that all politicians or only fairly high level ones? Insofar as I'm aware most Congresspersons in the US do not receive protection.
- ameister14 9y agoGermany has an extremely different history than Switzerland with 10x the population and 357,000 sqkm to Switzerland's 41,000. It is not what most would categorize as a 'small' country.
- ajeet_dhaliwal 9y agoBeing small definitely helps make this possible. That's not all it is though. An interesting question is why this is possible in Switzerland when in other countries (not even very far away) there are threats of abuse against politicians. There's been a spike of threats in the UK over the last year or so. Yesterday the PM of the UK even had to say the obvious that it is in unacceptable. I'm betting it's linked to poverty and desperation, if everyone is decently well off then no one's angry enough to threaten violence?
- skummetmaelk 9y agoThe UK has a population 8 times larger than Switzerland. When I said small I meant < 10 million people.
- ajeet_dhaliwal 9y agoOk but I wasn't saying that the UK has a small population, I think there's more to it. 8 million isn't exactly tiny either.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]