4 ms·
It's also too tiny to be representative of most of humanity
by throwaway27448 7mo ago
It's also too tiny to be representative of most of humanity
- ceejayoz 7mo agoSwitzerland has a population larger than all but ~11 US states.
- throwaway27448 7mo agoWhat is this supposed to imply? us states are also a poor representation of humanity. This matters a great deal: switzerland is notoriously ethnically homogenous and unable to get along with anyone. Life on easy mode!
- ceejayoz 7mo agoIt implies that Switzerland is by no means so tiny their lessons learned can't apply to other multi-million human sized regions. Switzerland gets along with others just fine, to the point where Italy and France used to handle their air defense on the weekends (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethiopian_Airlines_Flight_702 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethiopian_Airlines_Flight_702). > The Swiss Air Force did not respond because the incident occurred outside normal office hours; a Swiss Air Force spokesman stated: "Switzerland cannot intervene because its airbases are closed at night and on the weekend. It's a question of budget and staffing." Switzerland relies on neighboring countries to police its airspace outside of regular business hours; the French and Italian Air Forces have permission to escort suspicious flights into Swiss airspace, but do not have authority to shoot down an aircraft over Switzerland.
- throwaway27448 7mo agoTry 500 mil and you'll see china is the only interesting sample. If the swiss were able to get along with others, they wouldn't have such a reputation as racist nazis
- Liftyee 7mo ago"unable to get along with anyone" is an interesting claim given that the last armed conflict in Switzerland was in 1847 (Sonderbund War).
- Ray20 7mo agoI mean, it's hard to start wars when you don't get along with anyone and can't find a single ally.
- ceejayoz 7mo agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethiopian_Airlines_Flight_702 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethiopian_Airlines_Flight_702 > Switzerland relies on neighboring countries to police its airspace outside of regular business hours; the French and Italian Air Forces have permission to escort suspicious flights into Swiss airspace, but do not have authority to shoot down an aircraft over Switzerland. They were friendly enough with their neighbors to let their own Air Force have the nights and weekends off. Passport control when I went from France to Switzerland was someone coming onto the train and yelling “anyone not allowed in Switzerland? No? Good!” I think they’re fine.
- khalic 7mo agoEthnically homogeneous, you guys really just spew nonsense without doing _any_research? Swiss here, you’re very, very wrong
- input_sh 7mo agoMy god, Switzerland is literally the least ethnically homogenous country on the continent (if we ignore tiny nations like Luxembourg, Lichtenstein and Malta), with a third of its population being foreign-born, which is percentage-wise double that of the US.
- tjwebbnorfolk 7mo agoyou going for the cherry-picked-but-functionally-meaningless statistic of the week award?
- ceejayoz 7mo agoI'm going for the "Switzerland isn't a little village of 50 people, we can learn lessons from them just fine" award. Every large country breaks things up into small chunks. No one says Vermont can't handle a school system just because it's small.
- mgfist 7mo agoIt's got 9m people. The US has 30x the people and 250x the space. It's not comparable.
- ceejayoz 7mo agoSo why do we struggle to get the infrastructure to work in dense urban areas still? Or even just “not Wyoming”? Switzerland and California have the same population density. Why can’t CA build high speed rail?
- lava_pidgeon 7mo agoJust for the information Switzerland neither does ;)
- ceejayoz 7mo agoCA’s high speed rail isn’t high speed by European standards and it looks on the way to cancelation or significant curtailment. We can’t even manage what y’all would consider slow rail.
- lava_pidgeon 7mo agoI don't know but Swiss isn't the only train system that works but also Spain, Italy, France. Poland has a growing better train system . The swiss system has it's advantages but it is also very expensive. It might also worth it to check them out
- ceejayoz 7mo agoI’ve ridden on several. “Others do it even better and cheaper” makes the US failure to build and maintain infrastructure like this even sadder.
- Moldoteck 7mo agoThe advantage of swiss system is fast transfers. Hsr would likely break this system (no point in arriving faster if your connection gets longer by 10-15min
- ninalanyon 7mo agoPlenty big enough to be an example to be examined and perhaps emulated though.