Switzerland to vote on capping population at 10M | Hacker News Reader

Switzerland to vote on capping population at 10M

nytimes.com

52 pointsbookofjoe162 comments

"Anti foreigner sentiment"? Dear NYT, try to find an apartment in the EU or Switzerland. At best, you will get a furnished (to circumvent rent caps), overpriced 30 square meter dump that takes up 40% of your net salary.

Once that problem is solved, we can talk about "sentiments".

im not sure about Switzerland, but there are areas in Germany, where you can.

I doubt that very much. Sure there's places where the rent is less, but there's no jobs there. So a very low rent will still be over 40% of your pay (ie. nothing)

Then maybe actually check places yourself?

I am looking at a 4 room apartment in a very nice villa next to a small national park right now, for 560€, with a train going twice an hour 15 minutes ride to the town with my potential next job. (In germany)

So salaries there are lower, but so is apparently rent. Way less than 40%, more like 20%.

Could you please send name of city and district? Maybe in eastern germany, yes; Chemnitz is cheap. But most cities are by far not that cheap.

Yes, most cities are not cheap, but I am also not a city person so the place is in a remote village, but well connected. And no, not naming that concrete place as I really like to move there (again), but it is in western saxony so not that far from chemnitz (a town I don't like so much, the job itself is in a small town).

Ah, yes, as guessed: The region there is quite cheap - in Chemnitz there was a 2 room apartment for 350 EUR (including heating), fully furnished, at the city/castle pond: Excellent price, but the disctrict was not that great.

Not middle of nowhere Germany either, rents in Berlin are shockingly reasonable from an outside Germany perspective

Because they all moved to Switzerland?

https://www.iamexpat.ch/expat-info/swiss-news/which-national...

Maybe work on changing zoning laws instead of pandering to farmers and rural cantons?

It's much easier to blame the out group for your issues. The US currently has a sizable percentage of people that believe ICE deportations are going to lower housing prices, for example.

Does supply and demand apply or not? Building houses increases supply. Deportations reduce demand.

demand for what exactly?! 1 bedroom houses that sleep 37?

Immigrants make up 32.5% of construction workers[0] so without them we're unable to build new housing unless you have a solution to the falling birth rate and human capital. Also, they're more likely to reside with extended family or non-family members[1] (i.e. not eating up single family home supply)

So yes, while they might have some effect on housing supply, deporting them won't make a dent in prices. If you believe that deportations = cheaper houses, then I have a bridge to sell you. Too many localities have strict building regulations that artifically keep housing prices inflated; deportations won't do anything to fix that.

0: https://www.nahb.org/advocacy/industry-issues/labor-and-empl...

1: https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2019/02/living-arrangements...

Citizens can choose to prioritize quality of life over maximizing housing stock to increase the domestic population. “We’re all full up.” It is their country after all, it is their choice. Those who want in are not stakeholders nor have a vote.

It's amazing how quickly globalists were able to get the ideological left to switch from having riots protesting against globalism to declaring it racist to have any anti-globalist thoughts. Even more amazing are the intellectual knots they'll tie themselves up into when explaining how this came to be. The participants of the Battle of Seattle in 1999 now would be considered Nazis.

The only constant is change.

> The participants of the Battle of Seattle in 1999 now would be considered Nazis.

Given that I participated in that back in 99, and have been called a Nazi three times over the past two weeks for anodyne views, you’re literally not wrong.

What is "globalism"?

Building more houses would help domestics too. Otherwise tell me how keeping housing artificially low will benefit the locals?

For every other product the default stance is to try to get maximum features out of minimum price. With housing its the literal opposite. People take pride in how expensive houses are. Houses are treated as investments because houses are expensive. People won't worry about houses getting cheaper after they bought it if houses were like a toothbrush or a razor blade. Give me reasons why housing shouldn't be turned into a product so cheap and by default decent quality that people buy and throw it? You may say its hard or impossible, but would you say its a bad goal in itself?

I don’t have to give you reasons, those putting forth these proposals have their reasons and potentially the votes required to pass it. Economic rationality or consideration of potential immigrants wanting inexpensive housing somewhere they aren’t a citizen are not factors.

If Switzerland doesn’t want high population density throughout their country for quality of life reasons, that’s a choice, through their votes. If you don’t have a vote, you don’t get a say. There’s 8B+ humans on the planet and that will peak between ~9-10B before the end of the century, not everyone is going to get to live where they want to live during their life and runtime on the timeline. Is it sad and/or unfortunate? It just is.

Its the opposite of quality of life. Immigrants are irrelevant to it. Higher housing costs benefit nobody, local or immigrant. In no place in earth are housing costs coming down, so no matter immigrant or not we need to build housing at a mass scale just to have a fighting chance against rising prices. Making this about immigrants is bullshit. Refusing to build houses is utter bullshit, its the opposite of quality of life. It leads to crap quality of life and then people whine and cry and ask for more self destructive crap further spiraling into crap. Making houses cheap benefits everyone, keeping houses expensive harms everyone.

And building over every piece of land available diminishes quality of life in someplace like Switzerland with physically constrained geography.

Then they should make death chambers for people if they think they are full. At 9 million people, they could choose to live nicely with 4000 sq m lots per person or they can keep crying about housing prices while not doing the one tried and tested solution capitalism offers to high prices. Even if we take out untenable mountain land, how much does that leave us? There is no place on earth that is lacking land for housing. Its a self created problem.

To keep things in context, this entire comment chain is downstream of someone complaining about housing prices.

Who's to say they don't already have too much housing? People proposing this policy should lead by example and have their own houses demolished.

Let us amend the plan of action. People proposing this policy should lead by example and kill themselves to show commitment to keeping population in check.

Why would they want to do that?

You're stating this option like it's obvious and simple, but this all just amounts to choosing which of multiple ways to make one's country worse. While growth/immigration has macro-economic positives, it's not infinitely positive, so it doesn't justify ever-denser housing and ever-increasing cultural sub-dividing forever - and as people become less happy, they care less and less about "how the economy is doing".

Of course, nobody can agree on where the line is, or escape the shoulder-rubbing with racism and classism while trying to argue where the line is.

Social housing programs have historically doubled or tripled housing construction.

Has changing zoning laws historically ever boosted housing construction by more than 10%?

> Has changing zoning laws historically ever boosted housing construction by more than 10%

Certainly has in New Zealand - particularly in Christchurch and Auckland. The local politics are against densification - but the national politics have been ascendant. Over the last decade, New Zealand’s housing stock has grown by approximately 16%.

Densification has gone up in city centres - with broad political support from our left and right parlimentarians.

We must have more houses because our population is rising through immigration. Like many countries, we have too many retirees and not enough workers: so New Zealand is using immigration to patch that problem (particularly in healthcare and elderly care). Currently about 30% of our population was born in another country (gained residency or passport). It isn't a stable solution since working immigrants eventually get old too. The alternative is population growth which is also unstable in the long term (plus population growth is harder for the government to encourage).

There are many issues, and a lot of the same rhetoric you see in the US, but broadly immigration seems to be helping our economy.

If you're from the US, the state closest to NZ for population, size and weather would be Oregon (to give you a comparison).

I am happy with any method that increases housing, whether its government made housing programs or easing of zoning laws. Why see a conflict when both are contributing to the same goal?

I would prefer it if solutions which doubled housing constuction rates were promoted above solutions which housing developers lobbied the hardest for but which will barely move the needle.

They are also competing for the same land, which is the commodity that is actually in short supply.

The problem is that most people want to live in cities for whatever reason and, lo and behold, if one wants to buy regional and biological the grain has to grow somewhere on the countryside.

But yeah, most people have lost touch with where food comes from originally, before it's in the shelves of your supermarket.

So what you are saying is that these places have not built enough housing. That sounds like the actual problem, not the population size.

“We will do literally anything to make housing more affordable except build more of it.”

Forget where I first saw that but it’s absolutely true.

The left will try rent control, subsidies, taxes and prohibitions against speculation, banning AirBnB, etc. The right will try mass deportations and population caps.

Nobody will build more housing because that would work, and home owners are incentivized not to do anything that would work, and homeowners vote in much larger numbers.

The problem won’t be solved until renters out vote homeowners and until everyone who wants more affordable housing stops advocating the solutions that will not work.

How? I can't seem to affect any control the factors that constraint housing. I want to build more, but short of becoming a developer myself, I'm powerless. Even if I were a developer, I'd likely be subject to the same structural forces.

The main impediments are density limits, zoning, onerous permitting requirements, lawsuits from NIMBY groups to block everything, and so on.

The entire developed world is basically a big housing cartel where existing home owners work to limit supply to keep the price high.

It feels like the most effective strategy is to Simple Sabotage[1] Field Manual the NIMBY groups. Am I picking up what you're putting down?

1. https://www.cia.gov/static/5c875f3ec660e092cf893f60b4a288df/...

In Switzerland most people rent, in Zurich/Geneva it's more than 80% of inhabitants, doesn't help one bit. I kid you not, we have the renter association that is working tirelessly to prevent new construction.

I guess the motives are not just financial. They’re also just general opposition to change.

There was this weird period after WWII where we built tons of housing. It was a major factor in building the largest middle class in human history. Then we stopped.

I support YIMBYism for ones own countrymen but I don't see the need to fit as many people as possible in your country. A Switzerland with 25 million people will be a worse place to live regardless of whether the housing supply keeps up

Only the market can decide what's better or worse. Revealed preference is truer than words.

Wouldn't a referendum to limit immigration be the way to reveal their preference? Obviously immigrants would tautologically prefer to move there. How is a citizen to "vote" against that via the market? Discriminate and refuse to rent/sell to any immigrants? Charge them more to try to offset their perceived loss of utility? What portion of the country is even in a position to be asked the question via the market?

No, because money is the only thing that measures value. People vote against their interests all the time.

Again, how is money supposed to measure value here? Are people supposed to look into whether every company interacts with immigrants in any way and then boycott them if they do? The only avenue I see is for people to look at the aggregate economic benefits of immigration and then decide to limit it anyway, effectively treating the opportunity cost as the price they're willing to pay.

Money measures value numerically. Yes.

>money is the only thing that measures value

This is hideous, and can't really be interfaced with as a human.

Using the market as a revealed preference indicator is a disaster. There are too many perverse incentives and indirect causes-and-effects. It's like the scene in Battlefield Earth where they decide a human's favorite food is rat by observation.

Sure, apartments in Paris are overpriced because of immigrants buying them all. Fuck, that is so stupid. The same people parroting this anti-foreigners hate are also completely indifferent to slumlords profiteering on housing, and will support politicians who consistently side with landlords and homeowners over tenants and first buyers. Housing has never become more affordable under a right wing government.

This is a particularly egregious case of the "same people" fallacy.

Explain how. All the anti-immigration guys I've ever met were right-wingers. And we know the right's position on housing: never do anything that would devalue housing, never anger homeowners, always side with landlords, etc.

I don't know whether I'd call myself anti-immigration, but I'm as left as they come and I don't think that being pro-immigration is a left/right value. You can be on the left and have objections to immigration, you can be on the right and welcome immigration.

I invite you to read the book [How Migration Really Works](https://goodreads.com/book/show/82005192-how-migration-reall...).

Most people think that being anti-immigration equals being racist and wanting refugees to be turned away. And given your comment, that is also what you seem to believe. However, the large majority of immigration is state-sanctioned (so work visas, etc.), is not the immigration you hear about in the news or that racists talk about, and it's neither a left nor a right issue.

Immigration does have economic benefits, but I'm certain you'll agree nothing in the world is only good or only bad. Immigration does lead to larger competition on housing (more people = more demand), and generally this happens in the cities where the housing crisis is the worst. So more immigration undoubtedly benefits landlords.

Immigration also means more competition for jobs, which leads in practice to lower wages. So it also benefits capital-owners.

So you can be leftist, campaign to increase intake of refugees, campaign against the housing crisis and wealth inequality, and be against immigration.

As an example that might change your opinion (beyond talking to a leftist who does not think immigration is nothing but good): when the Tories came to power after Brexit, they implemented policies that greatly facilitated immigration (2-4 times yearly intake to what it was before Brexit) [0]. Corporations and the right are very much pro-immigration. Would you have expected that?

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_immigration_to_the_Unit...

Being anti-immigration is actually left-wing and pro-labor in most functional countries in the EU. It’s only in the US and the UK where being left-wing also being means pro-open borders, however odd that may be.

That is completely false. Anti-immigration is the main (if not only...) talking point of every far right political parties accross Europe.

I would consider myself well on the left too, and I mostly agree with what you're saying. But I simply reject the premise that anti-immigration policies and the people who support them do anything to help curb the housing crisis or improve working conditions. Immigration can be a net positive for the general population, if it goes hand-in-hand with worker and tenant protections, etc.

> Corporations and the right are very much pro-immigration. Would you have expected that?

Corporations and the old right, maybe, but the new populist right is very much anti-immigration. It is their main talking point and platform in today's political landscape.

> I simply reject the premise that anti-immigration policies and the people who support them do anything to help curb the housing crisis or improve working conditions.

I think you're again fighting a right-wing anti-immigration stance. I'm talking about the opposite of that.

> Immigration can be a net positive [...] if it goes hand-in-hand with worker and tenant protections

I'm certain you can see that this is a huge if. In practice, limiting immigration can indeed avoid worsening the housing crisis or decreasing wages, which can indeed help the relevant unions/charities campaign more effectively.

Reasoning by extreme: would you agree that importing 2M people per year to the UK would make the housing market and wages worse, independent of any ifs? Then you agree that there is a threshold where there is too much immigration, even with perfect conditions.

> right is very much anti-immigration

The Tories were very much anti-immigration, if you looked at their talking points. They were very much pro-working class, and Labour is very-much pro-human rights and pro-democracy. What they do is different.

Immigration is a broad topic. Immigration can be a valuable tool that benefits everybody, and it can destroy communities. Development has the same dichotomy (any kind - residential or otherwise). I'm certainly "anti-immigration" by some standards (i.e. "we're doing immigration bad", not "immigration as an idea is bad"). At the same time, I'm highly liberal (American).

(In case you're suspicious of other stereotypes: I'm not wealthy and have no interest in my home as an investment, and I don't live in California)

Stance on immigration and development is not nearly as strongly correlated with left/right as other wedge issues like reproductive rights, government secularism, etc.

Immigrants must have an immense power over these countries if they are able to forcibly prevent the construction of new housing.

Two possibilities could be true at the same time.

There might be a population limit that a country wants to set, based on effects of population visible in employment, housing , transportation, and social services.

There might be a motivation to curb immigration from certain parts of the world, based on cultural factors and aligning more with one side of the political spectrum than the other.

Context as a Swiss person: One of the strongest political parties in Switzerland today is the SVP (german acronym) which is right-wing. It has won a strong plurality in national elections for easily a decade.

This vote, however, does not stem from the federal (or even state-level) government, but instead is an initiative launched by a group of conservative politicians which happen to be part of the SVP party. The Swiss Federal Council (executive body) has come out against this initiative.

Switzerland has a form of direct democracy, where any group of individuals can propose a change in laws and if they collect 100k signatures (within 18 months) this proposed text will be voted on by the whole country. Here is a list of all referendums, a subset of which are these initiatives: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Swiss_federal_referend...

These initiatives are a frequent feature in Swiss politics, and not necessarily indicative of broadly popular legislation. In fact, whether or not an initiative is accepted is heavily correlated with the support it receives form the federal government. Give that they oppose it, I would bet against this passing.

SVP "which is right-wing" may not convey the degree and nature of that alignment. Just search for "SVP propaganda posters" or read https://www.dw.com/en/far-right-party-violated-anti-racism-l.... When I lived in Switzerland I was pretty shocked by how "out" the hard right was. It was as if having been neutral in WW2 not enough of their homegrown fascists got shot, and they still had plain old Nazis kicking around, holding offices and passing laws.

> plain old Nazis kicking around, holding offices and passing laws

This happened everywhere, to an extent that is genuinely surprising to me.

Pretty much every German company and government position post WW2 is in this category. And funnily enough, a good number of American organizations.

Chile's president is the son of a Nazi.

Japan went on operating business as usual except for the invading China part.

Supporting a fascist country bombing the Gaza Strip into oblivion ends up fucking your morality. We are seeing a lot of the west be very comfortable with fascism post 2023.

Will they use FIFO or LIFO to enforce the 10M?

And will those people be exiled or taken out to the back?

Based on the general behavior of humanity: probably a priority queue/heap.

Good for them, I hope the vote will reflect everyone's wishes.

https://archive.ph/KRH4W

Why shouldnt they be allowed to make a cap at 10M?

Because it's very likely against the Swiss constitution

Please elaborate and send me the link to the relevant www.parlament.ch docs :)

Let’s pretend it’s within the constitution. How are they going to enforce this?

For baby 10M+1 are they going to tell a Swiss woman that she can’t have a baby?

In any case, this is definitely not conformant to the treaty that the Swiss have with the EU around rights of free movement.

You need impeccable timing if you want a baby. Make sure grandma falls down the stairs first otherwise the baby will be exiled to Liechtenstein.

>For baby 10M+1 are they going to tell a Swiss woman that she can’t have a baby?

This wouldn't happen because it's not actually a population control measure, it's an immigration control measure - when the population gets above 9.5M, Switzerland would start shutting down immigration/asylum. There's nothing in the initiative that would set controls on births by Swiss citizens. (and it would be unlikely to be needed since Switzerland is facing the same low birth rate of other western countries)

Pause working visas and citizenship applications?

Organic population growth doesn’t have to be criminalized or authoritarian-controlled like China tried.

The text of the initiative is here: https://www.bk.admin.ch/ch/d/pore/vi/vis555t.html

It's primarily an attempt to control immigration.

At 9.5M, the government has to start limiting the issuance of residence permits and start renegotiating international commitments that drive population growth.

At 10M, the government has to terminate the free movement agreement with the EU.

The right-leaning parties bring up something like this every few years. They always get shot down.

"Against the Swiss constitution" doesn't really make sense here. This is a popular initiative; if accepted, it amends the Swiss constitution. Here's the text: https://www.bk.admin.ch/ch/d/pore/vi/vis555t.html

The only way you could argue an initiative is "against the Swiss constitution" in my opinion would be if it runs afoul of the rules: https://www.fedlex.admin.ch/eli/cc/1999/404/en#tit_4/chap_2

Unless you want to argue that this violates the mandatory provisions of international law, I don't think you have an argument. The text of the amendment specifically clarifies that any of the actions it mandates on parliament have to adhere to the mandatory provisions of international law, so I don't think that's an avenue you can pursue.

You are right, I forgot how xenophobic my native Switzerland is. Unlike e.g. Germany, they don't really have something in the constitution regarding helping immigrants.

However, they do have Art. 7 (human dignity) and Art. 8 (equality before law), which applies not only to Swiss citizens, but to all humans. I don't know about you, but I would think that excluding refugees who need help because we already have 10M people in the country would be against their human dignity.

Switzerland is a state. Talking about what they're "allowed" to do is just meaningless.

But, it does seem like a terrible place to live. I fear for the immigrants who form the basis of the economy.

Switzerland is consistently rated among the best places to live in almost any metric.

Until you meet the people there anyway!

I don't think immigrants make up the basis of the Swiss economy. Looking at their demographic data[1], it was pretty strongly European dominated for a very long time, and is still ~80% European.

When people talk about immigrants in this context, I don't think they mean people from the US, but lower socioeconomic asylum-seekers and refugees etc. from the middle-east.

It definitely seems their economy was built on European labor, which I believe the vast majority of European countries were.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Switzerland#Pe...

It depends somewhat on the specific campaign but generally in right-leaning Swiss politics, "immigrant" includes Europeans as well. I think that's definitely the case in this initiative since the text of the initiative requires ending freedom of movement with the EU.

They really don't like asylum seekers either though. Several of their arguments reference asylum seekers specifically: https://nachhaltigkeitsinitiative.ch/argumente/

So how does this work in practice? Once the population reaches 10M, people can't have kids?

Based on Switzerland’s total fertility rate of 1.3, the population increases only due to immigration, so controlling the flow of immigration is all that would need to happen.

Maybe they have to take a bounty first.

I'm going to guess that having too many kids would be a happy problem for them (and most gentrified Western societies)

Walk around Google Geneva (edit: doh, Zurich - my coffee hasn't kicked in), Novartis Basel, or CERN and count how many "Swiss" nationals there are. A large portion are white collar immigrants from CEE or Asia, or French commuters.

Switzerland's comparative advantage as an innovation hub was due to it's permissive capital structures and historic openness to white collar immigration.

All that a rule like this does is incentivize moving jobs out of Switzerland. Heck, look at UBS axing 3,000 jobs across all functions in CH and shifting them to India [0] last Wednesday.

If UBS, Novartis, Google Geneva (edit: doh, Zurich - my coffee hasn't kicked in), etc cannot continue to attract employees they will leave, and given the extremely friendly FTAs and BITs Switzerland [1] has signed either unilaterally or part of the EFTA, it's extremely easy.

Heck, look at how Syngenta went from being a Swiss major that employed thousands in Switzerland to a Chinese major that is about to IPO in Hong Kong [2] in just a decade.

Already 1 out of every 3 Swiss businesses is planning to shift out of Switzerland (primarily to the EU and US, but Asia comes up as well) [3].

Switzerland doesn't have the same comparative advantage in finance 40 years ago (why Basel when I can go to London, Frankfurt, or Amsterdam) nor manufacturing (why CH and not DE or CN) and this kind of ruling puts it's entire life sciences industry - the last industry within which CH remains a global leader - in jeopardy.

Additionally, Switzerland is not in the EU and is dependent on the EU-Switzerland FTA. If this were to pass, it would violate that FTA with Switzerland's largest trading partner. The EU can severely push back against CH, and France+Germany+Italy would very much support such retaliation as it would help incentivize Swiss businesses to shift out of Switzerland.

[0] - https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/ubs-plans-hire-3000...

[1] - https://www.seco.admin.ch/seco/en/home/Aussenwirtschaftspoli...

[2] - https://www.reuters.com/world/china/syngenta-targets-up-10-b...

[3] - https://www.thelocal.ch/20251023/swiss-companies-set-to-relo...

Swiss comp advantage started in WWII when they were used to exchange Nazis gold into other currencies - this gave them a topstart for the economic period after the war since they were perfectly connected globally and they understood to scale & keep this advantage for long time. Maybe its fading a little bit nowadays

Sure in finance (and even then it has been overshadowed by London, Frankfurt, and Amsterdam by the 2000s), but not really in innovation industries like the Life Sciences - which has historically been Switzerland's strongest niche and a major reason for Switzerland's modern success.

This was largely due to the success of Biogen in the 1980s which helped link American biopharma IP with the Swiss ecosystem along with a fairly permissive PR program for skilled foreign nationals.

Edit: cannot reply

> Roche and Lanza

Roche and Lanza would have remained CDMOs if it wasn't for Biogen bringing an entire generation of Harvard and MIT Biopharma researchers to Switzerland in the 1980s and helped build an ecosystem for therapeutics and biopharma R&D.

Much of Roche's biopharma and therapeutics leadership and IP is derived from Biogen alumni.

Biogen? Seriously?

Swiss pharma was driven by Roche and Lonza, which are much older than Biogen.

Some say Swiss was always "naturally lucky" due its location in the "blue banana" region: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Banana

To be honest during WWII, Switzerland was surrounded by the Nazis. Literally. On all sides, and learned a harsh lesson on not just the importance of military readiness but also economic resilience. So they took what they could get.

Switzerland is the best munitioned country on earth, because: After military service, most people keep their guns and are forced to yearly practicing (or loosing the gun) etc. - they are battle-ready every time.

Plus: they are the only(!) country on earth who could offer bunker protection to 95%+ of society in case of war.

They don’t keep the ammo though, so it’s quite funny to call it the “best munitioned country”.

Even if you only considered the guns, your claim seems to be false: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_civilian_g...

This was slightly misworded: They keep the gun, not the amo - the amo you have to buy on your yearly-forced practice shooting.

That’s just not true at all. Even if 100% of the population keeps 2x guns at home, at 9.5M people that would mean 19M guns. The US has more than 20x that many owned by civilians.

Second place?:

>Finland has civil defence shelters for about 4.8 million people [population 5.7 million]

https://valtioneuvosto.fi/en/-/1410869/finland-has-civil-def...

This seems a highly biased view. You could also say that because Switzerland wasn’t war raged they had a had start.

> You could also say that because Switzerland wasn’t war raged they had a had start.

The Nazis may have found the Swiss more useful as a 'neutral' country than they would have as conquered territory:

> No, the controversy in Swiss conduct comes from three major factors. The trade in gold, Nazi banking, and Jewish banking.*

> When the war began, Germany had less than 50 million dollars in gold in their national stores. Yet, during the war, the Allies claimed that the Swiss purchased over 300 million in gold from the Germans. Where did the extra gold come from? Well, the obvious answer is that Nazi Germany stole it from the countries they invaded. With most powers unwilling to accept what was obviously stolen gold as payment for goods, the Swiss didn't have the same scruples. They bought the gold for Swiss francs, which Germany than could use to purchase stuff they needed from other neutral powers such as Turkey. When confronted after the war, the Swiss only would admit to 58 million of French and Belgian gold, which they compensated the respective national banks for. Investigations couldn't prove the rest, and when suspiciously new, gold 20-Fr pieces began appearing in the late 1940s, bearing dates from the 1930s, no one seemed able to prove that the Swiss had melted down the gold and was trying to secretly pass it into circulation.

> Gold wasn't all they got though. The Allies also believed there to be hundreds of millions in assets from Nazi officials stashed in Swiss bank accounts. As the occupying powers of Germany, the Allies claimed that ownership of these accounts defaulted to them, while the Swiss not only disagreed, but also claimed near total ignorance, as their strict banking laws prevented any disclosure verifying the claims. […]

* https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4rciqp/why_d...

> The Swiss helped transform almost four-fifths of all German gold into highly convertible Swiss Francs. As a result, Germany was able to buy strategic raw materials from Spain and Portugal.

> Switzerland as a nation was immensely important to the German military machine and economic planning. In 1941, for example, Hitler received a billion Swiss francs as credit for the Russian campaign.

* https://www.warhistoryonline.com/instant-articles/nazis-neve...

That analysis starts too late. Swiss advantages arose from ignoring other countries' patent laws in the 1850s.

What is Google Geneva? They're in Zurich.

Western societies are aging. If you don't take in immigrants (which is basically the government becoming the far right), you're on a timer. Your economy will slow, insecurity will rise, and the far right will surge anyway. It's happening to Japan.

As far as I can tell, the problem is inequality leading to widespread insecurity because the rich buy up housing. The right wing has no solutions. What you probably need is Vienna-style public housing and very high taxes to reduce inequality and fund social services. But then the rich always threaten capital flight to tank your economy.

"Line must go up" is such a death wish and I don't see how people who consider themselves "green" can also preach the line must go up mantra. Yes, there are consequences from a shrinking population. There are also consequences from a growing one, especially one that is cultivated with no regard to anything other than maximizing the absolute number. But I guess if you're one of the people who can benefit from the line going up while alive, it doesn't matter what happens to the world once you're gone. Just make sure that line is doing the right thing while you're breathing and that's all that matters.

The system they’ve crafted relies on having enough of a working population to pay for the older benefit-receiving population. Their benefits are so large and unwieldy, they know the whole thing will fall apart if they don’t find a way to fund it.

They see this as a threat to their entire way of life.

You won't get anywhere if your solution to climate change is widespread poverty and insecurity. In fact from what I can tell the more secure societies are more likely to push green policies (comparing Europe vs US/China). Intuitively I have more capacity to entertain vegetarianism if I'm not working 80hrs per week. Anyway the rich are emitting way more carbon than everyone else so taxing them should be the first priority, not austerity.

Switzerland obviously isn't anti-immigrant. Really nobody is from there. Nearly half of their population immigrated. But the SVP wants selected varieties of white immigrants, nobody any darker skinned than David Hasselhoff, certainly not anyone from east of Vienna (the SVP had an entire anti-Kosovar campaign).

My neighbours are a white Dutch couple who have been living in Switzerland for close to 3 decades, but were still denied citizenship at the cantonal level. Every time, it failed at the cantonal level alone.

The co-founder of Bitcoin Suisse too has been struggling to obtain Swiss citizenship.

So again, it's not a question of skin colour or wealth, but a far deeply rooted sense of racism and superiority, and general disdain the SVP and their supporters hold for anyone who isn't German Swiss.

This just makes no sense, because before all why 10 million? There is no scientific or proven reason for this number by the proposing party. The SVP position paper is 38 pages of cherry-picked stats but nowhere do they demonstrate why 10 million is the breaking point rather than 9.5 or 11. It is a round number chosen for a slogan.

The Federal Council's official message to Parliament dismantles the whole thing. Real GDP per capita grew 0.82 percent annually between 2002 and 2022, comparable to Norway, Austria, and Denmark. EU and EFTA nationals are net contributors to Swiss social insurance, paying significantly more into AVS, AI, and APG than they receive back.

The SVP frames asylum seekers as the most urgent part of the problem, but recognized refugees make up about 1 percent of total residents. Meanwhile 64 percent of net migration in 2024 came from EU and EFTA countries, overwhelmingly people filling jobs. This is not an asylum crisis, it is labor migration the Swiss economy actively demands.

The initiative would likely require denouncing the ECHR, the Geneva Refugee Convention, and other human rights treaties to hit an arbitrary number. The guillotine clause means killing free movement also kills Schengen and Dublin. And the Federal Council already negotiated a safeguard clause with the EU that allows limiting immigration in justified cases without blowing up the entire bilateral relationship. That is a scalpel.

This initiative is a sledgehammer aimed at a number someone picked because it fits on a poster.

Sorry, not sorry, but facts don't care about feelings.

Typical right wing popularism to divide people and ignore the fact they have no actual solutions.

Racism is bad people. This will hurt people living in Switzerland today and those who end up there in the future.

Most of the immigration is French, German, Italian.

This isn't about racism. This is about unchecked immigration putting a strain on infrastructure and people feeling like they're losing their identity.

This initiative is stupid but the underlying problem is real: we're letting in too many people too fast.

Why always bringing back everything to racism? The people of Switzerland want to maintain the look an feel of their country as it is. How is racism the first thing you think of when no one mentionned race?

Because it is motivated by racism, and you can't pretend otherwise. This is pure slopulism.

https://www.reddit.com/r/PropagandaPosters/comments/1awmq1a/...

I support that. If you tried doing the inverse, for example, migrate to an Islamic country and bring over Christianity there, you would not be welcomed at all. I’m an expat and one thing I’ve learned is to integrate myself with the culture of the country that adopted me, I believe this shows respect and that I am aligned with its values and principles.

A huge majority of foreign residents in Switzerland come from Christian countries, so I don’t know what your point is.

Why is this down voted?

I live in Switzerland(not from here, migrated) and this vote is not specifically against muslims.

...because you are on HN.... ;-)

Do you truly believe Switzerland is at risk of an Islamic invasion? How do people on a platform such as HN fall for such obviously falsifiable statements? The initiative is obviously part of the global right-wing populist trend. Countries in the EU are dependent on immigration for maintaining their economies and public infrastructure as the population ages. I'm not Swiss, but the current government in Sweden has been going through with similar anti-criminal/anti-bad-immigrant (racist) politics and rethoric for four years now. As a result, there are now elderly care centers in parts of the country where 25% of all personnel have been expelled, children and even babies are taken back to their "home countries" without their parents and major domestic industry organisations are turning on the politicians they have fostered as the detrimental economic policies are killing low-wage industries in Sweden.

Curious: Do you live in Switzerland in 2025 / 2026?

I think they have a right to decide how they want their values and culture to be defined, and they can choose to start enforcing those at any given moment in however way they deem appropriate and necessary. Yes, it’s unfortunate to need immigration for your economy, but not at the sake of your values, customs, traditions, and principles.

I don't know if you've lived in an Islamic country but I have. In fact I was born there and spent more than half my life under Islamic law. More to it, I am the same brown minority that you seek to defend by posting this.

Westerners are so naive, Islam's objective is to grow and convert as many people as possible. To this end, they have been building mosques all over the world, increasing their population and weaponizing immigration. There is a reason Muslim countries don't allow Christians, Jews and other faiths to flourish in their homes.

Now, is this applicable to all Muslims? Of course not. But don't be naive and think that no one has an agenda. Case in point, my family has Muslims (Shia) and there are some of them I wouldn't want in the West.

No one is advocating for an immigration ban here, or is attempting to bar Muslims. Suggesting caps and enforcing sane limits is a good thing. Nations need to vet their applicants thoroughly before letting them in.

As a final note, I think that immigration is a band-aid for the population collapse in the West. The real issue is the underlying culture change. Perhaps a better avenue is to focus inward and promoting family values instead of outwards to resolve the issue?

"I don't know if you've lived in an Islamic country but I have. In fact I was born there and spent more than half my life under Islamic law" are you aware that not all islamic countries are the same, just as all christian countries are not the same. Perhaps you've let your view of your bubble in your home country colour your view of all others. I've been to muslim countries, most people don't care all that much about the west - certainly not enough to make a conspiracy to destroy it with immigration or whatever.

"Islam's objective is to grow and convert as many people as possible" is it? says who? Why do you think there is one unified islam with one goal? As far as I'm aware, islam is not a prosetylising religion, who's out to convert who?

"building mosques all over the world" yes when a bunch of religious people are in a place, they build a place of worship. From your comment history, you're apparently iranian - what exactly is sinister about building mosques?

"increasing population" yes people like to do that, it's a rather enjoyable process, not exactly mindblowing thing to accuse people of.

"weaponizing immigration" how? who is doing that? are these governments deliberately sending people over? Who are they sending? Why has no leak of this conspirary ever happened? Are multiple governments independantly doing this?

"There is a reason Muslim countries don't allow Christians, Jews and other faiths to flourish in their homes." flourish in what sense? many muslim countries have other faiths there. These are the people of the book afterall. Some countries have sharia law that applies only to muslims - harsher laws only for the majority religion.

"No one is advocating for an immigration ban here, or is attempting to bar Muslims" Yes people are, don't be naive, this is absolutely about muslims.

"promoting family values" Or maybe the real reason people aren't having kids are climate anxiety and economic factors. It's not that people just suddenly hate families now. What do you even mean by "family values", send woman back to the kitchen and that'll make people have kids? I doubt that's what you mean so what is your solution?

>>"Islam's objective is to grow and convert as many people as possible" is it? says who?

Do you not learn anything about Islam in schools where you live? I'm sure you must have spent at least few hours at History class covering Islam expansion starting with Mohamed.

>> What do you even mean by "family values", send woman back to the kitchen and that'll make people have kids? I doubt that's what you mean so what is your solution?

You want more people from cultures who think exactly like that. You believe Muslim women should be baby factories for the West.

"Do you not learn anything about Islam in schools where you live? I'm sure you must have spent at least few hours at History class covering Islam expansion starting with Mohamed." I am ex-muslim, I am aware of islamic history. And what of it? Do christians want to crusade for the levant still? Why are you pointing to literal ancient history?

"You want more people from cultures who think exactly like that" Many don't think like this. I do not want or not want them.

"You believe Muslim women should be baby factories for the West." No I don't, why would you think otherwise?

On second though, you simply extracted what things you could best insult me with from my reply and put words in my mouth, I will no longer be engaging in this. Goodbye.

    Perhaps a better avenue is to focus inward and promoting family values instead of outwards to resolve the issue?

Inwards is the right answer, but it's not about lack of family values. It's the lack of stability and belief that people can give a good life to their offspring. We need to retreat from this capitalistic consume everything social structure and kids will naturally flow.

The problem with that is that the Pandora's box has been opened. We are trading with globalized world.

Europeans first stole the resources that fed the industrial revolution and enriched themselves at the loss of everybody else. Then with the US forced everyone to be part of "line always goes up" club, with extreme violence at the times.

You cannot just "exit" the club now. All rare metals, fruits, various produce, chemicals, clothing etc are sourced with the global trade network. Since everybody has to be in the "line goes up or else" club, (we) Europeans have to continue the saga to not lose the entire civilization we have now. Nobody except very big nations with rich resources can afford pulling the plug and be self sufficient.

If you are not joining the ponzi scheme, you cannot buy shit. Without buying rare elements you cannot make advanced silicon, computers, solar cells, batteries. All engineering, medicine, food needs the ruthless capitalism. You cannot quit without turning the world upside down again. And who are you going to force through the inevitable meat grinder?

> To this end, they have been building mosques all over the world, increasing their population and weaponizing immigration ... Now, is this applicable to all Muslims? Of course not. But don't be naive and think that no one has an agenda.

As opposed to the Catholic Church never ever building Basilicas and Cathedrals? Places of worship are social and political centers given how Abrahamic religions work.

> There is a reason Muslim countries don't allow Christians, Jews and other faiths to flourish in their homes.

Met a Copt the other day: Seemed content and had no complains. Spoke to a Rūm a while ago, and despite the recent turn of events, they seemed optimistic about the Levant. The only Assryian I know complained about the US-led war on Iraq uprooting their lives more than any previous regime. That isn't to say there aren't issues, but which society is without them? Especially when exaggerators & hypocrites are in no short supply, regardless of their socio-religious allegiance.

The majority of Swiss immigrants come from Italy, Germany, Portugal, France Kosovo, and Spain.

> Kosovo

Technically a muslim majority country but likely not what OP ment.

> migrate to an Islamic country and bring over Christianity there, you would not be welcomed at all

That sounds a lot like what us Europeans did in North Africa not that long ago. We were indeed not welcomed.

Is the purpose of the comparison to show that it can indeed be a bad thing (i.e. you're simply agreeing with the parent), or implying that Europeans should be subject to the same treatment as punishment?

This is the trap that the western world has set up for itself. You cannot destroy countries on the grounds that your society is better and that it's worth the destruction to make them be like yourself, and then at the same time say forget about it when it's time to actually be better and more tolerant.

Ignoring the "two wrongs make a right" fallacy (AKA "hypocrisy is the worst sin"), it doesn't even seem to follow. Wouldn't imposing your culture on less developed nations and also rejecting those cultures from your own nation be consistent behavior?

> bring over Christianity there

Yes, this covers about a thousand years of European history.

It's funny to see people pretending not to know the history of spreading Christianity and subsequently colonialism.

>pretending not to know the history

What are you referring to in the parent comment? It sounds like you're agreeing with them, but this antagonistic part is mysterious.

> migrate to an Islamic country and bring over Christianity there, you would not be welcomed at all

Well, Europeans ever try their hand with the Jewish one? Seem to have some previous experience there.

Good for them.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com