Switzerland wil have a referendum to cap population at 10M

Swiss here and able to vote.

In fact, just posted my voting letter today, before taking a 1h bike ride through the biggest city in Switzerland, having lots of space and freedom biking around in our beautiful city.

When taking the train to my parents house, I pass several farms and landly smaller cities. Alot of free space in between those, train mostly has spare seats, depending on rush hour timings. There usually are several big commercials on private farmer land stating “NO to 10 Million Population”, prompting people to vote YES on the SVP/UDC initiative.

The initiative’s lancers seem to play a lot on people’s fear of overcrowding, which even in the most population-dense city in Switzerland seems like a joke. There’s a lot of space and quality of living is still amazing here.

Yes, during rush hours, you might have to stand for 15-30min in public transport. Yes, finding an appartment is getting harder and more difficult.

But is this a problem of more people coming here or the failures of the state preparing for future population growth? We have so much space, benefits from diverse cultures and love for human beings.

My letter was specifically voting AGAINST this initiative.

This is such a fascinating referendum. The population is at 9.1m, and at 9.5m it appears they'll stall asylum and family reunification, and at 10m they'll execute a Swexit - Switzerland isn't in the EU but it allows freedom of movement to EU nationals. Boy it is interesting to see what's going on in the world right now. There were so many things that I saw growing up as relatively solid but I just happened to grow up in an era of European unity and American primacy. I thought that even Brexit was a one-off event, but perhaps it is the other way around and European unity is a temporary thing that fragments easily. An interesting age, in the Austen Chamberlain sense.

This initiative is a trap. Essentially, it would allow for the termination of bilateral agreements with Europe. This is what the SVP has been trying to do for decades, and this initiative provides them with a convenient excuse. And it’s particularly ironic because the SVP has always opposed legislation promoting sustainability.

So this is essentially a way to reduce immigration to the country? And if they get close to the cap they will "need to take measures, particularly in the areas of asylum and family reunification."

Would be curious to learn more about why this is being proposed.

The strong point of the Swiss political system is that the government is, by (EDIT) convention, made up by all significant parties. No major political force can say “if only we were in power...” because they already are. Also, no party can create disasters and then disappear and leave the consequences to the following election winners to deal with.

This referendum is an attempt by the members of SVP/UDC, the right-most party, to show that on immigration topics they have more popular support than what their relative power in the government is. Their proposed solution is very crude, on the other hand the opposition parties' position is basically “do nothing, everything is going fine”. I would have hoped the government to offer some kind of compromise proposal (which they are allowed to do and appears as third option in many referendums), but it seems the Swiss citizens will be faced with a “all or nothing” choice.

As a novel immigrant, as much as I appreciate the political system of my new host country, I was quite disappointed by the referendum campaign from both sides. Most of the propaganda concerning this vote has emotional and apocalytic tones (“the immigrants will steal our welfare and overpopulation will transform Switzerland into Kowloon” vs “we will become a pariah state, our pensioners will die unassisted due to the lack of nurses, EU will tariff us to death”).

Switzerland is ranked 67th in country population density. For reference, the United Kingdom is ranked 48th and the United States is ranked 183rd.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependen...

While I agree we need to keep our immigration under control, this is not the solution.

One interesting point for me is that, IMHO, the propaganda on the „no“ side wad _abysmal_.

The counter arguments are awful and they are presented awfully and not even in such high quantity as you would expect.

I think it has a good chance of passing just because of that.

And then political shitf***y will begin with „we don’t know how to turn this into law!“, which is not good for the basis of democracy…

Being in Switzerland it looks to me like this is a really tough referendum.

Both sides have very good arguments and from the side it looks like either way the Switzerland has to give up some asoects of its high quality of life.

If the initiative succeeds, Switzerland will get a large hit from the cancelation of a lot of bilateral agreements with the EU.

If the population exceeds 10M then the current rail and road infrastructure will not handle it well.

I have already been on a train which refused to move due overload. And it would only depart if enough people have disembarked. The autobahn are already having hours long traffic jams at peak hours and with extra million people it will multiply.

And it's almost impossible to significantly improve the throughput of rail and autobahn without extreme projects.

It looks like a lose / lose situation is a sense and a people are going to decide which hit to take.

Australia here, Switzerland knows something we don't, it is sad.

The question is not wrong, but the answer is. Here in Switzerlands middle land, the streets and trains are very crowded, not just during peek hours. On the other hand, it's already now hard to find people for almost any kind of work.

I'm probably missing something. This would seem a bit problematic for some organizations that put Switzerland on the world stage, e.g.

- The UN

- CERN

- The Red Cross

- The WHO

- The World Economic Forum

- ETH Zurich

There are probably a lot of others I'm missing.

I'd imagine international banks also benefit from recruiting foreign nationals to do business with their home countries, and not just because there's a shortage of domestic labor. The whole point of these organizations is to be the headquarters of a much larger international project.

I guess maybe there will be a lot of weird exceptions if this were to go though. Otherwise, good luck sourcing your diplomats from entirely Swiss people.

Are they going to start executing people after 10M? How does it work? FIFO? or LIFO?

absent productivity increases, population growth is just there to maintain the welfare state for retirees, it's a perpetuum mobile. apart from that, i dont even know what the benefits of a growing population would be. switzerland is trying a different tack through democratic means.

No Population Growth in My Backyard -- NPGIMBY.

As a voting member of the population all I can say is - good luck winning it… We have silly initiatives once in a while, that’s because you don’t need that much to start one.

I propose we set it at 4Mio instead, deport all the German speakers and give their properties to the French-speaking ones.

So is everyone in Europe calling the Swiss a bunch of phobic racists for wanting to place restrictions on immigration; or is that judgement just reserved for Americans?

This is a good move. I hope Switzerland doesn't become like the UK.

> ... population has grown... ... number of people immigrating depends primarily on the labour market. When the economy is strong, companies... often recruit the ... workers they need from the EU.

> ...

> The... sustainability initiative...[:] If the permanent resident population exceeds 9.5 million ... the Federal Council and Parliament will need to take measures, particularly in the areas of asylum and family reunification.

So, this measure says that if companies need more workers, Switzerland will refuse to grant asylum, and will prevent Swiss residents from having their spouse, child or parent come live with them.

Regardless of whether population capping is legitimate or not, that sounds quite nasty. If the measure had said "in case of population growing, there will be a moratorium on recruiting employees from abroad", then you would have a discussion.

Absolute dogshit we are voting on this week. Hopefully both gets denied. We are working ourselves into the bleakest future.

But without population growth there will be no economic growth, the economy will stall it will be an unmitigated disaster.

Every country must grow as much as it possibly can and then keep growing much more than that.

Leaving the EU or ending free movement with EU countries leads to a significant increase in immigration from the third world, as Brexit showed.

Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47015345

Switzerland is much less desirable and attractive than they think they are.

Great that they can vote, but this is also stupid. Plus, it works both ways, so if Switzerland wants to add a cap to limit movement then it won't be able to enjoy free movement in the EU either. I totally understand why Norway and Switzerland do not want to join the EU; the EU has tons of problems, but this kind of cherry-picking is simply unfair to the other EU members. (Also, the EU has to stop expanding. It constantly picks up poor countries, and demands that the richer EU countries must now pay more than before. This is also totally unfair.)

I'm sure they are very proud of themselves for sneaking racist anti-immigrant policy in under the guise of left wing environmental rhetoric.

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This seems a much more rational approach than pure political agenda driven fear mongering campaigns against immigrants.

It would be saner to set a cap that is in some way tied to ecological footprint, food production, energy generation capacity, and other factors that make a country sustainable and sovereign. Trouble is, I expect that would put nearly every country way over.

First step towards a purge civilization. Also, rather narrowminded (to be expected, tho) to not expect your population to naturally grow beyond 10m (at 9.1 now) just based on the normal progress of healthcare and wellbeing.