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Comment by inglor_cz | Hacker News Reader

You also vote so often on public topics that it takes the sting out of politics.

In a standard country, you have only one chance in 4 or 5 years to change your politicians and then basically have to put up with everything the winners come up with, checks and balances notwithstanding. And the candidates are chasing enormous power.

In CH, the threat of a hostile referendum is always hanging over the heads of your politicians. Their position of power over their voters is much weaker than elsewhere.

I envy you your system. I wish we adopted it in 1990 after the Velvet Revolution. By now, our people would have learnt how to use it and would tame the excesses of the first years.

"We are simply in a geographic region that has always been economically active."

So is Iraq (since Antiquity) or South Africa (since the Age of Sail).

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One of the other things that strikes me about Switzerland compared to the US . . . there is no single President; there is a council, and the position of "head of state" is just a "first among equals" role which rotates through the council.

The older I get, I think one of the major flaws of the US system was creating a sole President. The great strengths of the US Constitution over many European ones (even given today's craziness) is that it explicitly sets up checks and balances amongst both the branches of the Federal government and between the states and the Feds. And it also uses the Bill of Rights to essentially ban even the most popular laws if they infringe fundamental human rights.

But despite all that, the singular President has turned into a king-like figure, because we can't seem to get around the fundamental human tendency to want a strongman leader. And this along with toxic partisanship is beginning to corrode everything I mentioned above. I really wonder if the Founders made a mistake not splitting executive power up amongst 3-5 people, merely because it might have counteracted this "worship the strong man" tendency in the human psyche.

I wonder how the US or any other presidential systems would look like with a rule "for every 25 per cent of the vote, the particular candidate gets a year in power".

Capital wants a king-like figure in this moment, not human nature, nor The People.

Capital, in an existing capitalist system, never wants an actual (as opposed to a distracting but powerless figurehead, which they might want) king-like figure (because such a figure is a transfer of power from capital as the existing ruling class to the monarch-like leader), but it is also structurally vulnerable to the emergence of such figures because for each individual capitalist there is an incentive to cooperate with any emerging king-like figure to receive favorable treatment over other capitalists.

This is one of the areas where a popular leftist mantra tends to be right in its conclusion (“Capital will always side with fascism”)—and this works for a wide variety of authoritarianisms that don’t overtly seek the utter destruction of private capital, not just fascism in the narrow sense—but exactly backwards in its rationale (“because fascism does not threaten capital”, when in fact the reason is because fascism does threaten capital, but does so both less and less immediately for capital that cooperates with it than capital that resists.)

Capital seems to work well in Switzerland too, where there is no opportunity for a king-like figure to arise.

Capital wants clear and stable rules. If a king can provide those, then Capital likes the king. I'm not sure clarity and stability of rules is a property of the upcoming american monarchy.

Capital likes clear and stable rules provided there is no opportunity to gut that stability for immense immediate personal gain, fuck the future.

When such an opportunity appears, capital jumps at it. It did it in Russia in the 90s and it's doing it in the US right now.

Any statement like 'Capital wants' is foolish. Because by nature there is competition, and very few things beyond the basics are good for all capital.

And if anything history often shows that capital doesn't want a king while the people demand it.

"And it also uses the Bill of Rights to essentially ban even the most popular laws if they infringe fundamental human rights." paraphrasing George Carlin: There is no such thing as Rights. Only privileges which can be revoked on a whim.

> You also vote so often on public topics that it takes the sting out of politics.

The sort of direct democracy of Switzerland is something that is sorely lacking in all other western democracies. It's pretty clear that representative democracy doesn't work anymore (if it ever had).

Direct democracy can only work if fundamental rights are also protected, otherwise it just turns into the tyranny of the majority.

>In CH, the threat of a hostile referendum is always hanging over the heads of your politicians. Their position of power over their voters is much weaker than elsewhere.

Don't many US states have ballot initiatives? How is this different than that?

Well said. Yes, direct democracy is the most cherished part of our politics. It also contributes to stability and decentralizes power as you said.

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