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Comment by swed420 | Hacker News Reader

> *American Democracy

Not according to the link above, and the growing array of solvable yet perpetually unsolved problems in other countries.

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Swiss democracy is doing just fine, it has frequent changing of power and lack of concentration of it built in much more robustly rather than US' pinky promises and wishful expectations. If only EU would be less pushy in bilateral talks and stop bullying it on internal matters and rather focus on its own rising internal... catastrophe(s) behind the doors.

Plus frequent public votes on actually important matters, the mark of adult smart population. Politicians globally will go out of their way to explain to you why Swiss model is bad for other places, but it boils down to who holds actual decision power and accountability.

They did vote to ban minarets, which was odd. Also, the Swiss are fairly conservative in the classical personal responsibility sense, which makes for good citizen voters. They do this through an aggressive policy of education and assimilation that emphasizes “Swissness.” Dropping Swiss style into other countries might not work out as well.

Make public votes elsewhere and you will see laws like those minarets passing left and right. This is what an actual democracy looks like - majority's opinion prevails, not only topic one likes to see happening.

Folks generally like to feel they are objective, but only to the point when something they don't favor is winning. I am guilty of same behavior, part of human nature I guess but its good to realize one's own fallacies

The swiss system mostly works because the people are disciplined, believe in lots of self responsibility, they actually have militias with mandatory participation (like America's 2nd amendment, but the first clause isn't flavor text), you have to join the volunteer fire brigade, etc... Immigrants who want to become swiss citizens...they do a spot check of your home cleanliness to make sure you are "swiss enough".

> Swiss democracy is doing just fine, it has frequent changing of power and lack of concentration of it built in much more robustly rather than US' pinky promises and wishful expectations.

Recent rebuttals to the Swiss model:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49451032

Nothing there of that sort apart from maga-level typical claims 'they have nazi gold' which ain't true but it gives a fuzzy feeling of knowing a bit to some less educated folks.

Its most direct democracy globally having most free citizens (depends on viewpoint but I stand behind this claim firmly), bar none. They just don't need to shout about it all the time like US folks do, they simply just deliver, over 800 years and counting.

There were more important points made there than "nazi gold"

That’s just another way of saying “whoever you vote for, the government always gets in” if you limit terminology like that. The rise of the Reform and Brexit party undermines the argument of the Wikipedia page somewhat.

And what systemic problems have they addressed since then? I don't live there, but it seems that NHS is increasingly gutted by capital interests, with no end in sight.

At best, you get an illusion of progress. That's not progress.

Very different questions to the one I was answering.

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