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Comment by rsync | Hacker News Reader

"In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."

Well, they also produced switzerland.

Have you been there ?

It's the best place in the world - and not just the scenery.

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Best for those who are there. Others with wrong-{skin color, religion, continent etc} must stay away.

That's not true at all.

I suspect that, unlike my own country, they enforce and respect the immigration laws on the books - truly a shock.

However, even outside city centers you run into people of all types. On my last trip I found myself in Gruyere and there were muslim families and east asians touring at the rest stop.

Inside Zurich there's a roughly Minneapolis-level background of racial diversity.

"Minneapolis-level background of racial diversity" Here is what the Minneapolis Fed bank president has to say about that,

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/feds-kashkari-shocked-black...

He's talking about national statistics. He just happened to be working in MPLS at the time:

"Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari said Wednesday he was “shocked” that the persistently higher national black unemployment rate relative to the rate for whites was not better understood."

People who live in MPLS know that it has a huge immigrant population of somali and other east africans as well as (I think) the largest Hmong/Cambodian population in the United States. That is, in addition to the inner-city diversity of american blacks. Also, unlike many other cities, there are native americans.

So it's not NYC or LA, but it's not Denver either. In fact, I think my original comparison may be off - MPLS is probably more diverse than Zurich.

(I have lived in MPLS on two different occasions - 6 and 5 years each. I own a business in Zurich.)

I am saying having racial diversity without equity is not a desirable outcome.

You just deviated from the point we are discussing and went to something else completely (racism). It has its merits but the point is: Did Switzerland peace produce more wealth than Italy's war.

If you had the best house in the neighborhood and everyone tried to move from theirs and start living in yours instead of improving their own, wouldn't you be annoyed?

I'm not defending racism and hate. Those are unacceptable. It is however understandable that they might grow annoyed of people profiting of their country without bringing anything good. From what I have heard it's not an issue of {skin color, religion, continent etc} but simply an issue of being foreign.

True, Switzerland is a great (and beautiful) place to live. But I think the OP was talking about civilization advances and of those Switzerland has much less than Italy.

In fact the same goes for WWII. True, it was a bloody, devastating and awful conflict that brought out the worst in mankind... but at the same time created the tools that put the 1st humans in the Moon and gave us atomic power.

The unfortunate truth is that many of the major technological advances of mankind are closely connected to war.

Yes, but it was a backwater (losing a lot to emigration) until ~1850, right?

But to say Switzerland didn't invest in war would be horribly wrong. They are armed to the teeth with fortifications and a large militia force - ever check out the guns per capita in Switzerland?

> But to say Switzerland didn't invest in war would be horribly wrong

What war? They invested in peace, successfully so far. Attacking Switzerland would be a bad idea for most countries.

Switzerland developed the massed pike infantry formation tactics that dominated early-modern Europe before the advent of reliable firearms, crushed a major regional power (Burgundy), and exported mercenaries that formed the backbone of many other European states' standing armies.

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