5 ms·

> benefits from diverse cultures You mean "benefits from increased population," right? Because isn't the whole theory that people are the same? If so, you're j

• bootsmann 5mo ago
  > more people with certain skills (if you're filtering based on that) This is how freedom of movement works, yes, and it's a key reason why our country is so rich.
  • philipallstar 5mo ago
    [flagged]
    • bootsmann 5mo ago
      [flagged]
      • philipallstar 5mo ago
        [flagged]
    • mschuster91 5mo ago
      > only spends 16% of GDP on public welfare It's easy to not have to spend much money on public welfare when there is a constant stream of foreign money floating in.
      • philipallstar 5mo ago
        That doesn't make much sense. Do you think foreign money is directly paid to people who would otherwise be welfare recipients? Is there anything foreign money can't do, would you say?
        • mschuster91 5mo ago
          When foreign money flows into the economy, it generates jobs, and because there is so much of it, these jobs can be well paid. And when you got a population that has a low unemployment rate and high wages, you consequently need to spend less money on social welfare.
      • deleted 5mo ago
        [deleted]
    • wat10000 5mo ago
      I get hard working and low crime, but why does homogeneity make a country rich?
      • netsharc 5mo ago
        It's a dog whistle for "if a country's racial identity remained pure everything would've been fine".
        • wat10000 5mo ago
          [flagged]
          • WarmWash 5mo ago
            Because of Japan. A rigid culture and tradition can obviously carry a lot of weight, but usually comes with intense racism as well.
            • wat10000 5mo ago
              Kind of a funny example, since Japan got crushed by the poster boy country for diversity, and this nonsense about homogeneity played no small part in their arrogance in thinking they could win.
              • wat10000 5mo ago
                I wonder why this got downvoted. Are we not supposed to mention the war? Does it make people uncomfortable to be reminded of how their rhetoric mirrors that of fascists?
          • philipallstar 5mo ago
            People talking about dog whistles constantly state that as if it's fact, instead of them just being race-brained.
        • philipallstar 5mo ago
    • Telemakhos 5mo ago
      The first time I was in Switzerland was 1985, and even then, I would not call it "homogenous." The people at the time spoke French, German, Italian, and Romanisch. Switzerland is an excellent example of the "harmonious" rather than "homogenous": it manages to integrate people from four linguistic groups into a well-ordered society.
      • throwaway85825 5mo ago
        Homogeneous in the modern use of the word.
        • JumpCrisscross 5mo ago
          > Homogeneous in the modern use What does it mean if it includes heterogenous populations from linguistic, historic, religious and even cultural backgrounds?
          • throwaway85825 5mo ago
            While it's terribly fascinating for linguists it's generally understood that the languages and cultures within Switzerland are more related and generally homogeneous than when compared with for example asiatic language and culture.
            • JumpCrisscross 5mo ago
              > the languages and cultures within Switzerland are more related and generally homogeneous than when compared with for example asiatic language and culture Switzerland speaks languages from the Italic and Germanic clades of PIE [1]. That makes them about as dissimilar as Indo-Iranian and Slavic languages are from each of them. Helvetia is a confederacy specifically because Switzerland has never been particularly homogenous. Homogeneity explains, in part, Nordic and Japanese success, though less and less the former in the modern era. It does not explain Switzerland’s. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-European_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-European_language
    • tpholland 5mo ago
      Switzerland does not have a homogenous population, and to a reasonable person who has travelled in Switzerland I think this is an insane thing to be defending. A significant proportion of the population (certainly for Europe) do not even share a common first language. Significant proportions sit on different sides of the reformation which is again a big deal for Europe. etc
      • Avicebron 5mo ago
        Homogeneous isn't likely the correct word. Shared cultural norms and "harmonious" is often more accurately what people describe when the call a country "homogeneous".
        • JumpCrisscross 5mo ago
          > what people describe when the call a country "homogeneous" The Nordic countries were historically ethnically homogenous. Switzerland has been a multi-ethnic place since like the Helvetii were being picked on by Caesar.
      • Teever 5mo ago
        I think that it's pretty obvious that the user that you're responding to is using the term 'homogenous' as a euphemism for "white"
        • philipallstar 5mo ago
          I'm not - not everything is about race. That's a pretty basic lesson that World War 2 taught us, that you should have learned.
          • tpholland 5mo ago
            What did you mean when you said homogenous, given the reality of Switzerland, its history, its civil structure, its languages, and its culture?
    • abdullahkhalids 5mo ago
      > it provides an incredibly valuable and trustworthy banking service to the world For most people in developing countries, Swiss banks are places where politicians and rich people stash ill-gotten wealth (corruption, crime, etc), because they know the banks will never let the legal system get back the money.
    • throwaway67678 5mo ago
      Switzerland, homogeneous? Is this some kind of joke?
• stymaar 5mo ago
  Nobody in Switzerland is worried about the population growing due to birthrate. This referendum is about stopping immigration (even though in Switzerland more than anywhere else, immigration is at the foundation of the country's wealth).
  • rayiner 5mo ago
    > (even though in Switzerland more than anywhere else, immigration is at the foundation of the country's wealth). Is that true? Switzerland's foreign-born population was under 5% around WWII. Wasn't Switzerland already a rich country by then?
    • moomin 5mo ago
      It saw a fair bit of immigration before the war to get there. The war itself obviously helped enrich them by not being in it and also practically zeroed immigration. Immigration continued after the war. There’s other factors, obviously, like early industrialisation.
    • tempay 5mo ago
      In 1910 the foreign-born population was 14.7% and the drop around WWII was caused by other factors. Much of the industrialisation and banking industry was driven by immigrants. Arguably the wealth of today is the product of managing to avoid the worst of WWII and profiting from Switzerland's "neutrality" but that's an entire conversation by itself.
      • kakacik 5mo ago
        Well they were neutral, its just most folks, even otherwise smart ones, don't like true neutral behavior if it doesn't actually favor their side, hence such 'smart' snarky remarks I can see all the time, by people feeling they know history. Swiss accepted everybody, hundreds of thousands of refugees too, some parts even when it became obvious they will all face starvation since they were completely encircled by axis. Private banks accepted everybody's money, just like every global bank did before and after the war. They secretly helped allies - check Campione d'Italia story for example. Thats very far from neutral behavior. And so on. But most people don't want to know facts, they want simple black & white stories. It continues till today - they are officially neutral but look at their moves ie against russia during Ukraine war. Completely aligned with west (well apart from US which has top brass collaborating with their sworn mortal enemy). Look how their army looks like - 100% compatibility with NATO, 0% with russia or anybody else. They picked their side, they just don't boast around it, actions speak more than 1000 words.
• TacticalCoder 5mo ago
  > Because isn't the whole theory that people are the same? If so, you're just adding new people who are exactly the same as the existing people. That's a very dumb theory. People cannot just be exchanged: you cannot take say, 60 million people out of Bangladesh, put them in Japan, and expect Japan to stay the same. Just as you cannot take 60 million Japanese, put them in Bangladesh, and expect Bangladesh to stay the name. That's a fact. But I could give a shitload of historical examples too... Here's one: when white and black people arrived in the americas, there was still cannibalism taking place in both northern and southern america. The americas had neither white nor black people. Today there's no cannibalism anymore and there are not many kids sacrifices happening in the US to please Inca/Maya gods anymore either. A slightly more reasonable theory is that if you import people through immigration at a reasonable rate, you can assimilate those people. For example for a long time in Europe female genital mutilation wasn't a thing anymore. Now sadly due to mass migration, ask any ob-gyn doctor in western Europe what he sees and what kind of act he has to do: like re-stitching hymens to pretend the women-to-be-married are virgins (because, yes, there are patriarchal cultures where men are going to inspect a woman's hymen to make sure she's a virgin). People just live in a fantasy land in their heads: there are 300 million women alive, today, who've been genitally mutilated (that's a very sizeable percentage of all the women out there). What's actually ongoing is weirder and shittier than most people realize. I say good for Switzerland to curb immigration a bit. People may be not dissimilar but cultures certainly are.
• joxdosba 5mo ago
  [flagged]
  • mike_hearn 5mo ago
    Probably the same as Britain, which didn't suffer any economic damage from leaving the EU. Look at current trade ratios, GDP and other core stats vs neighbouring France. No difference. The EU single market is apparently not as important as it's cracked up to be. The EU has sanctioned Switzerland before and it didn't matter. And the Swiss economy is very strong.
    • joxdosba 5mo ago
      One of those is an island, the other is a landlocked country that would quite literally starve to death if the EU decided to stop facilitating its access to international markets. Switzerland exists purely at the mercy of the EU, it lacks the military capabilities to fight its way out to the sea and force an alternate reality. The day Switzerland is able to conquer the north of Italy is the day they get to meaningfully negotiate with the EU.
      • mike_hearn 5mo ago
        Uh, that escalated fast! I really hope you're not European with threats like that. EU tried all this bullshit with the UK too. Threatening to cut off electricity supplies and so on. The mask really fell, but in the end they didn't do it, they didn't even respect their own supposed red lines like cooperation on academic research. They meekly invited the UK back into their academic collaboration a few years later despite claiming at the time that it was a "privilege" tied to everything else by the laws of physics. So the idea an organization that weak is going to try and genocide an entire country over FoM is ridiculous. At any rate, there's nothing about being an island that automatically stops a crazy genocidal EU trying to starve another country. If I recall history correctly, less than 100 years ago a big European country was attempting to starve Britain to death by systematically sinking its cargo convoys. Then just a few decades later east Germany was trying to starve Berlin by shutting down rail links. Note: both attempts failed.