Basic income plan clearly rejected by Swiss voters
swissinfo.ch
swissinfo.ch
If you look for a coding job in Europe, Zurich is a great place to live and is the only place where net-salaries are on par with the Bay Area: You can expect to get 7000 - 12000 CHF / month after taxes. If you are from the EU and thinking to move, you find my email address in my Hacknews profile. Also you can read here why I moved to Switzerland to work in IT: https://medium.com/@iwaninzurich/eight-reasons-why-i-moved-t...
Single people don't want to spend their weekends alone in a farmhouse, and 3+ person families don't want to live the bulk of their time in a studio apartment. Meanwhile, that 300-500k dollar farmhouse could put your kids through private school or good colleges.
Two hours is a long time! Sit around for the two hours doing nothing, you'll see.
As much as I like currently not having a commute, it was certainly not time that was "crumpled and thrown away".
It's much better to separate it out than try to combine it in one suburban house.
Renting is, unfortunately and quite inaccurately, viewed as "throwing money away." The real estate industry does a great job brainwashing people that they should buy, buy, buy, that buying a house is a great investment and a very good way to build wealth. İt's probably one of the greatest lies perpetuated in modern times.
But most single family home landlords are small time operators who can't be counted on to provide long term occupancy. I would find such an arrangement untenable.
For those who want to be mobile I completely agree that renting makes sense, but for many folks being rooted leads to ownership, rather than ownership leading to being rooted.
How is renting wasting money? Are you not living in the unit? You're gaining 100% benefit by paying rent and receiving a roof over your head.
You must mean a waste by losing out on building equity?
That's a crap shoot in itself. A hot housing market and equity can go into the toilet at anytime due to very irrational market conditions. Look at the housing markets of Las Vegas or Miami for examples.
Think of the math this way. A $1mil condo in New York generates approximately 45k/yr income, or 4.5% return on investment per year in rents. Subtract taxes and amortization and ask yourself, can you get similar returns elsewhere? You could for example purchase an index fund with the same $1mil and contribute the gains towards rent. Either way you are living "for free."
It is however risky not to diversify. So if the $1mil is all you have and it is all in the house, you are in danger. Additionally, property is not very liquid. In the downturn it would be difficult to exit. For these reasons, I believe house ownership only makes sense as a portion of one's assets. Renting makes solid financial sense otherwise.
In the conversation of rent vs. own people often forget to take the opportunity costs into account.
Also, the burden of being rooted, and of having to maintain a house, could be such a significant detraction to quality of life that it totally makes up the difference.
Also, at least in my case as a relatively young American, living in a house is pretty much to opposite of the lifestyle I see myself wanting for at least the next decade.
Owning a house outright is great (I'm 1/3 of the way there) but for most, a 30-year mortgage is no more of a wise decision than a rental. You're just swapping landlord for bank.
On the other hand, it's really hard to raise a family of four in a mutual fund.
Why do you feel that you need a mortgage in order to raise a family of four? Why not rent?
I hate this mentality, and it seems pervasive worldwide. As I said in another comment in this thread, I like to see rent as paying for a housing service: I pay a monthly amount in exchange for a roof plus a lot of annoying things I'd have to take care of myself (and spend money on) if I were a homeowner: broken appliances, water heater issues, heating issues, etc. It's quite a list.
"Service" is sort of key in the way I see it, and is the reason why I only rent from apartment companies and not from landlords. There are so many stories about downright insane landlords out there that I don't want to take my chances dealing having to deal with those.
If the economy is growing faster than your interest rate and the population is increasing as well and its really hard to build new housing, then by all means buy your house and maybe even take out a loan to do so! If not, maybe still buy, but there is little urgency.
Also, when you own, you can do what you want without having to ask permission. on top of that - no noisy neighbors that are too close!
Let's say you save $100k. You can either buy a house, or put the money in the stock market. If you put it in the stock market, you get a return but that return ends up going to your landlord's profit. If you but the house you get no return but don't pay the landlord's profit.
In other words, it's an investment. If you believe that the RE market has better ROI, and don't mind being rooted, then go for it. If you believe the stock market has better ROI and you prefer to be mobile, do the stock market.
I chose to buy because:
1. It's significantly cheaper after tax deductions compared to renting in my area.
2. This is the highest paying area for the software labor market in the world, and I've looked compared to last 10 years. I don't really see anywhere else that would get better than the SF bay area.
3. It solidifies your housing costs. When prices are rising relatively rapidly, it can be a money saver, and over the long term, it's definitely a very large money saver because it locks your price in. That is a risky bet to make for sure.
You can end up with a housing bubble and being underwater for 5 years, or you could end up in somewhere like london or vancouver, where it goes up and stays up and by the time that 'bubble' pops, your 50 years old. But that is the same risk you take when you chose whatever profession you have as a career or by leaving your down payment savings in stock & bonds.
4. You have to compare against what your down payment would make in the stock market comparatively.
5. When you move away to better opportunities, you can just rent it, especially if rental prices have gone up a %5-%10+ since you bought and would cover the management fees. Maybe life will bring you back again, especially if you left from a pretty good market already.
6. If you save a lot of money, trading a fraction of your savings in down payment for a discounted housing cost for the rest of your life can be a good one time investment.
I guess people have different aspirations in life.
I own a house worth about £300k with a mortgage of £140k. The mortgage repayments are £500 per month.
I wanted to upgrade my house to somewhere larger in a nicer area but didn't want to wipe out my savings to raise a deposit. So I made the decision to rent somewhere instead.
It feels like the best of both worlds. I get all the upside of a big house without any liability for something going wrong (boilers, high end kitchen equipment, etc). I've rented the house I own to some tenants and the profit from the rent I make goes towards my rented house.
Best case scenario - one day I'll own my old house outright and continue to rent. I might even buy another house to rent out at some point. Worst case - the market goes tits up I stop renting and return to the house I own where my mortgage is very affordable.
True, but in most places outside the US (at least certainly in mainland Europe) moving great distances for a better job opportunity is unusual.
The main appeal of owning real estate vs. renting is the long-term and intergenerational perspective. At some point it'll be paid off and the housing cost will be extremely low - and the children will inherit something of value.
I dont get it ether, this sounds like the worst deal not even including the fact that i might do not want to live there in 30 years.
As American hegemony spun the globe so did the "own your acres".
Here in Europe we have been taking mortgages to buy property long before the USA was born, in fact since the Renaissance.
It certainly is a long-term contract, but nobody really considers it a "yolk." After a number of years your debt is paid and you can keep living in your place without paying anything else.
The alternative is to keep paying rent forever, well into retirement. Which one do you think is smarter?
You know when I mention this to my co-workers they grimace. We call mortgages and a family the 15-30 year jail sentence.
Edit: Parent was posting about buying a house in Switzerland - and that is really expensive in the surroundings of Zurich. Buying a condo is cheaper in any case - I just made a statement that you can't compare oranges to apples.
Imagine a city with everyone living in a small house with land, it’d be impossible to live in, as the distances would be far too large.
What does that have to do with s3nny's post? I can't afford to buy a house in the area I work.
I think young people realize that the suburban dream was just that.
Was mildly annoyed at having my time wasted.
>If you look for a coding job in Europe
May I ask why?
The only questions you can decide by referendum is things that either have no budgetary consequences or things that set a long term political direction (join the EU, basic income, ...).
Anything that has a shorter horizon needs to be tightly coupled to the budget and you can only adopt a complete budget, not decide on individual questions. Once you accept that you only choose between budgetA and budgetB for the next year/term - you also accept that those who write those budgets as propositions are "parties" and you have arrived at parliamentary, not direct, democracy. Most democracies already have referendums on things like this, but still aren't "direct democracies".
In short - the Swiss have just slightly more referendums than the rest, but they too have a parliament with parties that propose complete, coherent budgets. I like the idea of slightly more referendums but no country that has a budget with thousands of expenses and thousands of different taxes could be governed only direct votes on each of them (perhaps most importantly because no one is interested in voting on thousands of issues).
If you vote for "2% raised taxes" or "expand railway network" only the combination (yes, yes) and (no, no) can balance the budget. People would likely vote against the tax increase but for the infrastructure investment.
And even if you could afford it - how do you prioritize it against something else that was also accepted through referendum?
Whereas the Australians say: “Look what those bastards have done now …”
Processed food like frozen pizza is expensive as a substantial amount of (manual?), well-paid labour goes into convenience food.
It's definitely an easier move for an EU citizen to do than the USA although from a family and immigration standpoint. But immigration wise it isn't hard to get an H1B or L1 visa since the hiring company will handle all of it. From there applying for a green card is pretty automatic. For canadian's and australians, it's even easier to immigrate, almost the same amount of work as moving to switzerland for an EU citizen.
Indian and Chinese people have a hard time with green cards in the USA because there is per country lineups. The immigration 'lines' for those 2 countries are much longer than any other nationality because of their population sizes. Switzerland or somewhere else in the EU might be more attractive from that standpoint, although I don't know if they implemented something similar there.
Cost of living wise CH is definitely more expensive. Housing costs are also close in SF and CH.
I have worked at Universities and IT in the US, Switzerland, and Austria. Austria has almost free kindergardens, schools, and higher education. In CH (basel area) I paid 70USD/day/child kindergarden fee. In the US it's quite normal to start saving for your kids education when they are born.
US health care is a mess. Even after paying tons of money you have to set money aside for all the times you get screwed over by insurgence companies refusing to pay certain parts of a procedure. If you are honest with yourself you have to subtract this all from your pay check and/or add this when you live in an area that has fail-proof health insurance for under 400 USD/month/family.
CH's living expenses are generally very high and most people starting a job there underestimate this. If you think a 40 USD pizza at a normal looking place is insane, you are one of them.
Just throwing some pointers out that salaries must be compared in context ...
However being from some part of this planet I googled a few keywords and came across this: https://www.vice.com/read/guide-to-european-racist-leagues
The website features a lot in HN so but I don't know about the quality of their journalism. Anyway, you never know till you try...
Germany:
The Evidence At the time of going to press, a comprehensive reading of the past hundred years of German history showed no documented incidents of any racial bias.
Racism Rating 0/5
ehh???
Sometimes I wonder how people can be so oblivious to satire and sarcasm.
I'm starting a coding internship in Geneva in about two months and I was wondering whether you would have any advice about renting apartments in the area. For example, should I be trying to find apartments in France, or am I better off sticking with Switzerland. Should I be getting in touch with estate agents in the area via phone? Are there any good sites which contain apartment listings? I will be staying there for 12 months so any advice would be much appreciated.
* I wouldn't bother with France unless you're willing to drive and waste a lot of time in traffic jams. Annemasse is the exception, but it's pretty sketchy imho.
* On the other hand, living in the countryside can be a good option. Public transportation works better than if you cross the border, and biking to work can be reasonably doable.
* Living a bit further in Vaud, near a train station, is a good option too.
* Most apartments belong to estate companies (régies immobilières), not individual landlords. Contacting them directly is definitely the way to go.
* https://www.scrapeo.com (disclaimer: it's run by friends of mine, you can scroll down and see the websites they're scraping if you prefer).
I will look into those places and that website, thank you very much!
I find that rather odd, any ideas why it is that way? Is there really so few flats on the market? I would think that estate agents would be happy to help anyone find a home...
I have tried to email a number of estate agents and all I got was automated responses. Some in French, despite the fact that I wrote the email in English. They all mostly said the same thing: "Our website has many listings, please look there".
> Bizarrely it can be just as cheap getting an air b&b for a few months at a time.
While that may work, I would much rather stay in the same place.
> Also it is absolutely worth looking in to a place across the border in France, it's cheaper, not that far away, and public transport is pretty good.
Hrm, France is looking very nice too. I guess it all depends on where I find a place first.
> I've been here for 6 months or so, but leaving soon... its really not the city for me.
May I ask why it's not the city for you?
Vacancy rate in Geneva proper is about 0.4%. As usual in such situations, why bother with a foreigner who isn't going to stay long when you likely know friends/acquaintances (Geneva is a small world :) looking for a place?
I get barely 6000 after taxes after working here for almost three years. I'm not Zürich area, but still. Out of curiosity, in which branch are you?
The list goes on and on and on, so from this Bay Area like salery there is only something left if you're young, without children and healthy.
If there is anything you can not afford there is a huge social infrastructure to help you out. There is no reason your kids should miss one something.
Also dont forget that these salaries include 4 weeks and more paid holidays.
All of these things are not included in american health care & social plans ether so i dont know why i even write that comment right now.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_democracy
But essentially a direct democracy is one where the people effect policy instead of electing representatives to do so on their behalf
As a (tentative) supporter of basic income, I'm already quite happy that something like a fifth to a quarter of voters went for it.
Do you think there is a risk passing a referendum resolution that passed just by a small margin?
I have been thinking about this since the result of Austrian presidental elections, and how more polarized the politics in Europe is becoming, while trying to figure out if there is a way how to move politics to a a place where it would strive for finding society-wide consensus and compromise on most issues.
As a Swiss, I would say a high number of referenda works against polarization. This Sunday, we had to vote on five national questions and additional local ones. This high number of questions makes it very unlikely that you agree on everything even with your family and best friends. Thus, we automatically learn to disagree without getting polarized.
My grand-father always encouraged his children to vote even though he knew they nomrally had different opinions and "neutralized" his vote. To him, voting at all was much more important than what the vote was, as long as you vote for what you honestly believe is right. I fully share this view.
That said, further referendums on the question of immigration, for example automatically expelling convicted foreigners after their sentence is complete were fairly convincingly rejected. From the Swiss I know, most consider the referendum process to be fairly normal and routine. They receive information booklets presenting both sides of the argument, the view from the government and the view from any political parties who are interested. They make their decision and they decide.
It is difficult to explain I think unless you've seen it in action. I am from the UK and we are currently in the middle of the Brexit/Remain campaign. There's not an iota of fact or reason in the current debate and our politicians do things like predict WWIII if we leave and waves of Turkish immigrants if we remain. The whole thing is moronic and embarrassing. There are without a doubt some stupid things said/done here (the black sheep poster by the SVP for example) but the level of political discourse is no way near the level of stupidity in the UK IMO. If you're imagining Trump-esque campaigns every few months, it's basically the polar opposite. Unless you speak the local language and know what you're looking at, you'd hardly notice. At best you will see billboard or two amidst the other adverts and perhaps receive an information leaflet in the post. That's it. Perhaps the Swiss guy or girl above might say it is more obvious perhaps, if you have more Swiss friends than I do or watch a lot of TV, but I don't think, from what I have seen, that it is anywhere near as vitriolic as any other country I know.
Source: I'm British and I live in a French-speaking Canton (in spite of my username).
In the US, many vilify their political opponents as crazy and/or morally inferior. This has happened around referendums. We also try to get civic organizations to adopt politicized codes of conduct and have politicized social media campaigns to kick people out of civic organizations. I hope Switzerland doesn't have those horrors.
From my experience even young people are able to have healthy discussions about "difficult" topics and then just proceed with life.
This topic clearly led to some interesting discussions where some had very radical thoughts to, but i saw no friendships breaking so far.
As someone who lived in a while in Austria it is completely different there. I've seen people punched in the face for less aggressive political motives in the public.
In 1890 the constitution was changed by popular vote to give the federal government the authority and duty to establish a health care system, either voluntary or mandatory.
A project for mandatory accident and health insurance passed the parliament in 1899, but a referendum was requested and the proposed law was rejected by popular vote in 1900.
A new law was passed in 1911, keeping the mandatory accident insurance but leaving the states free to make health insurance voluntary or mandatory. This law survived a referendum in 1912.
Attempts at revising the health insurance law failed in the 20's, 40's and 50's.
A popular initiative for mandatory health insurance failed the vote in 1974. A counter-project submitted by the government, with mandatory coverage for large risks only, also failed the vote.
Finally, another popular initiative for mandatory health insurance is deposited in 1986. The government prepares an indirect counter-project, resulting in a law that includes mandatory health insurance. The law is adopted by the parliament in March 1994, but a referendum is requested. Both the initiative and the referendum on the law are submitted to a popular vote in December 1994. The initiative fails by 76.6% "no" while the counter-project passes by 51.8% "yes".
Now countries like Finland is looking into it.
I am pretty confident we are going to end up there, but like many other major changes in society it takes time and thats fine.
Maybe 1500 would get more people to vote for it, or something else chagned, etc.
> 1. The Confederation has to implement a basic income.
> 2. This basic income has to be sufficient to live in dignity and participate to public life.
> 3. The basic income amount and financing are regulated by law.
Nothing regarding the exact amount. Swiss people were asked to vote on an idea, not on a specific amount.
You could live with 1500 if you really wanted to. Its not impossible.
Most of the supporters and some of the initiators of the initiative, that I've spoken with, were strongly for a idealistic implementation, meaning everybody physically located in Switzerland would be eligible. While the number one argument against a BI was that exactly this absolute unconditionality would be a recipe for a disaster, especially given the current migration situation in the EU.
The Swiss are notoriously risk averse, so any proposal that does not take into account any possible side effects, usually gets rejected with a margin just like this one.
To have a realistic chance of acceptance, I think the 'unconditional' needs to be dropped. Add a conditional on citizenship, flesh out the financing some more and just try again. The problem here is that a "national basic income" instantly catapults you politically very far right, even though it's a very leftist position.
The nice things about simple plans is that they are simple: once you start complicating matters, it gets really messy.
Actually, I'd be in favor of a pragmatic vesting form, where the BI-payout is not binary, but you'd become eligible for a bigger share gradually over time, not just for non Swiss nationals, but especially for Swiss nationals. So that we youngsters won't just get a big payday, but it could be tied to a vesting scheme connected with your total taxes ever payed. Meaning, after taking on some small jobs and earning money the hard way first, even young (Swiss) people would have to 'earn' their BI.
The argument against direct democracy (referendums on any subject any sizeable group wants to put on vote) is that people will be economically irresponsible and vote themselves popular, expensive goodies with no regards of financing or cost.
This shows otherwise.
Many countries in Europe, including Switzerland, were ramping up debt. In Switzerland this was stopped by the people via a vote in 2001. In the eurozone it took the debt crisis.
Switzerland is one the most highly educated and richest country on earth. Do you think the results of direct democracy would be equally responsible in Egypt, Syria or Bolivia? (I'm half-Syrian).
Quality attracts and breeds more quality. Somehow, they manage to pull it off for last 800 years, in one way or the other.
Even in the US, voters often tend to vote against their own self interest. E.g. people that stand to benefit from social programs often vote for conservatives against social programs.
Why is anyone who votes against short-term self-interest automatically uninformed?
However, I think the prevailing thinking will lean more and more towards voting for the free stuff. Someone else is paying for it, right?
I think such regulations should be decreed as a law and not as a constitution norm if at all. But if everybody has a say you get bikeshedding in the constitution.
I mean, currently the UK referendum on EU withdrawal arguments seem to have peaked around "leaving the EU will knock £62000 off the value of your house and please Putin and ISIS" vs "women will be at risk of sex attacks from foreigners if we don't leave"[1]. I'm not familiar with the Swiss situation but doubt the constitutional changes around minarets were fought over the merits of Islamic architecture or nuanced arguments about zoning.
[1] There are slightly subtler arguments being used, but virtually none of them are based on fact either.
It is a misconception to believe that these are the only valid types of arguments against minarets.
There are many that value their own culture and want to keep it that way without necessarily viewing other cultures as inferior.
Frankly I'd have thought enshrining the principle of intolerance of the symbols of a particular religion in the constitution represented a more substantive cultural change, but then I'm not Swiss.
When you hire for a company you want your dream team to have a diverse background of ideas and experiences but that doesn't mean you let them work on the goals and products they worked on at their previous employer with whatever processes they want.
Edit: to be clear, I'm not sure the specific minaret law is a downside from my experience, but that is not to say that your overall point on populist reforms is invalid. I was just focusing on the specific law.
Is/Was prohibited anyway in Switzerland, so this vote didn't change anything on that fact. Though this argument has been used during the campaign before the vote.
I do agree however, that things like minarets should better be left to a general building code addressing the problem of architectural shouting contests without explicitly mentioning religion. The stupidity of having the literal phrase (well, in german) "it is forbidden to erect minarets" in the constitution should serve as a warning to anyone who praises direct democracy all too blindly.
I really don't get it why cases like that are solved with a polar vote (change or no change), not with approval voting offering more than two possible results on different levels of compromise. There seems to be a tiny glimse of it (only on the wiki in german: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doppeltes_Ja_mit_Stichfrage ) but that is just three way between no change, proposal and one administrative counter-proposal, which still leaves the door wide open to polarism.
The US population for instance prohibited alcohol and then undid the prohibition, and I think the least that can be said in favor of this process is that since then there's seemingly a consensus in the US wrt prohibition. I'm not sure such consensus is achievable when elected officials enact laws, not to mention when a Supreme Court reinterprets the constitution to de-facto enact a law.
Overall, to me it seems that decisions will be made and reversed no matter what's your process, and it seems that referendums are a great way for the population to "own" the decision - not just affect it but feel responsibility for it.
Also I'd guess that more direct democracy would reduce both stability and corruption (people are more likely to change the status quo, harder to bribe, and not as likely to form 2 or some other small number of groups voting together on every issue as professional politicians.) It seems that we have a lot of both stability (presumably a good thing) and corruption (presumably a bad thing) and it doesn't look like a terrible gamble to attempt to reduce both.
The way I see it, this is down to two factors:
1. Since Switzerland does have multiple parties and all of the bigger ones a represented in the federal council, there is more compromise and decisions made by consensus. This in turn leads to less dramatics shifts after a term is up and some politicians are replaced. In contrast in the US, where you could have a democratic president and parliament coming in after a term of a republican majority and president (or vice versa). It seems likely, that the new powers to be would set about undoing some decisions made by their predecessors. At the very least you'd have a rather dramatic course change at hand.
2. It is very easy to collect enough signatures for a referendum (50000 signatures within 100 days of the law being passed in parlament) and for every change to the constitution there is a mandatory referendum (no signatures needed, it will brought to a public vote). This means that any controversial law can be brought to a public vote. Which more or less prohibits sudden drastic changes and promotes more incremental change, which brings more stability.
On the other hand, there might be something to the Idea, that direct democracy reduces stability. Basically it is the flip side of 2. above: it is also quite easy to gather 100000 votes to establish a popular initiative. The parties have picked up on that and often introduce controversial initiatives to further their election campaigns. There are not many safeguards in place, so unfortunately there was an increase in badly drafted amendments in recent years. Different parties have brought forward initiatives that contradicted other parts of the constitution.
It has nothing to do with the direct democracy thing, but the most surprising is this so-called "magic formula" is only a tradition and there is nothing in the law that prevents a parliamentary coalition from voting an executive branch representing only 50% of the parliament.
It might be not the only reason for the way the executive branch is set up, but IMO it's an important part of the system as it is.
Even the 'Ndrangheta from Italy has a branch. http://www.thelocal.ch/20160317/mafia-suspects-refuse-to-lea...
There was a politician that forwarded state secrets to Kazakhstan and got bribed. The thing is if you apologize and publicly declare that it was a mistake to get caught, no one bats an eye. She's now head of the parliament. The unofficial rule is, just don't overdo it...
Lets be honest here, the 'minaret' issue is extremely minor one. I does not effect large numbers of people and it does not effecte them in a particularly strong way. Based on first principle I voted against it, but was not the most important issue for me or for Switzerland.
Most of the time the results Switzerland gets to usually are really good. Many things that passed in other countries did not pass in Switzerland.
I think that the argument that Swiss democracy is bad because of this minaret example, is extremely weak. If that the best argument you can bring against the Swiss system, then its doing something right. You can't find cases of gross misjudgment or fiscal or social issues or anything like that? I can find stuff like that in most other countries.
The Swiss system can also be used to remove stuff from the constitution. So this minaret stuff need not be there forever.
Edit: One addition I would make to the system is that if a law is rejected by a 'human rights' evaluation group, it needs to pass with 2/3 majority.
Not at all. It violates the very idea of freedom of religion. I doubt a ban on building of churches would be approved and this shows that a more popular group can (and does) trample on fundamental human rights of other smaller groups.
Also, your metaphor is incorrect; this is banning bell towers not banning churches.
Would a ban on bell towers become part of the Constitution? I seriously doubt it. A ban on minarets, one that actually made sense and didn't look like religious intolerance, would belong in construction codes or zoning laws.
If similar vote would be done now in countries around europe, results would be pretty similar.
Hardly surprising. Nobody wants to be awoken at ungodly hours by that howling.
How is this in the USA? Outside certain districts in Boston, NY or the bible belt, I have this feeling there isn't regular church bell ringing going on, is there? Given the many flavors of Christianity in the US and their possibly differing schedule, this could easily turn into an annoyance, I would guess.
However, in contrast, a giant megaphone blaring quite "whiny" or "whingy" (for lack of a better way of describing it) gibberish doesn't evoke anything remotely that normal. The sound itself, without any sort of religious connotation is annoying. I suppose I would find it just as annoying if the sound of church-bells were played over a megaphone, 5 times a day.
My main objection is that if you have religious freedom, then either all churches/mosques/temples get the same freedom to call to prayer or none does. The exclusivity of church bells in Europe and muezzins east of Europe is the basic conflict of fairness here. So, realistically, given that we cannot allow them all, including pagans, satanists (death metal?), the most logical conclusion would be to generally disallow, with exceptions where the population insists on it.
On the other hand, I wish somebody would actually enforce anti-noise laws against my trash-techno neighbor at night ;)
Then I don't think you can characterise yourself as "very sensitive to noise". Perhaps very sensitive to certain kinds of noise, but not noise in general?
Anyway I've personally always found the call to prayer quite musical and beautiful.
On the other hand, when people complain about "populism", they expose another problem with democracy I've long complained about. Opinion gets swayed by all sorts of reasons, actions and emotions.
E.g. In the Brexit vote, the vote-stay side is trying to use fear and no-doubt some will be swayed by that. Does that mean that they actually want it? Would they have voted it if they weren't exposed to that influence? Must we keep the voters in a sterile-bubble until they decide? What about making informed decisions? Who decides what is fear-mongering vs informing the voters?
Next up, you have influential persons. This can be everyone from your local community activist, your overbearing and opinionated family member, to public figures such as actors and artists. You can see it now with Donald Trump's campaign. Every single person that has any wide "reach" to the public is using it to promote their view of Trump, whether good or bad. I call them vote-multipliers; their singular vote means a whole lot more than yours or mine, no matter how valid or factual our arguments are. When opinion and emotion sways voting, the "one-person one-vote" mantra doesn't hold up anymore.
Generally the term seems to be used by people worried about knee-jerk reactionary voting, "it's what I want, therefore force everyone to do it", or "it's good for me, so yes, even if it is bad for others".
> In the Brexit vote, the vote-stay side is trying to use fear
Both sides are using fear almost exclusively. The in side claim the economy will collapse without the EU, the out side claim it's doomed if we stay in, and these are hardly the only examples - the out side shamelessly perpetuates the 'all immigrants are criminal freeloaders who want to take over' that is basically pure racism, the in side will gladly paint anyone who wants to leave as a racist.
It's really terrible, and is hardly surprising - the exact same thing happened in the AV referendum, where the two major parties (who use AV internally) came out with what was essentially 'you are too stupid for AV, stick with nice simple FPtP'.
It might demonstrate that ~50% of the population currently agrees with the current message of a person or group of people
Allowing any religion to advertise itself in any form should be prohibited as it is intrusive to all.
What if someone invented a religion that told everyone to use airhorns every hour?
Referendum is no panacea. A legislative body can tweak legislation and debate it and compromise. When voting on a referendum there is no such compromise. It's just a binary choice.
Oops, 60% of the populace thinks you're a nuisance who should just shut up and put up (and ideally just go away).
In that case, direct democracy is indeed broken, but the reason is not "discrimination" against those who are actually pretty powerful, but eventual instability from the system's inability to act as a predictive proxy for more direct (less civilized) resolution.
How to Move to Switzerland
Unless you are from 10 new EU countries, then getting work permit isn't automatic but you deal with limited queues per year, per canton. Once depleted (which goes fast), bye. And employer has to prove to officials that there is no one Swiss or with existing permit to do this job, which adds a lot of bureaucracy.
It gets deeper, far from easy simple situation. But it's true that EU citizens have certain advantages.
Because the first referendum that should be called for in a country that has 1:1 voting on issues is to end all political advertisements.
The money is there, it "wants" to get spent, the more openly that happens, the less harm will be done. If you don't give it a channel it will find one.
Something I admire about the Swiss btw.
In a real democracy, they're not supposed to either. If their culture, religion, etc is important to them, it should definitely affect their decisions, and that's the democratic way. Same for their feelings.
Democracy is not about voting what's "right" (who is to say? you?) but about getting what the majority wants. And there's nothing unhonest about letting culture, religion and feelings affecting your vote.
What you describe as your ideal democracy where people only make "rational choices" is rather the old republican idea of sages who know better than the people (like the "founding fathers" in the US) and encode some norms forever.
"Rational" used in this sense, is totally normative -- "what I think is rational" or "what those experts say it rational and good for you", and in the end undemocratic.
Can I turn the question around : do you think this would work in USA, India and Brazil (random countries, nothing specific)?
20% is not a bad result, I think they expected around 15%. A lot of people would've gone "Fuuuuuuu I voted for that" if it'd been accepted.
Yeah, there's your answer. It seems the Swiss are conservative with how they spend their money
Let's see the trend in future referendums. You could argue that basic income may be impractical today. But over the next 10, 20, 30 years, the world will change dramatically.
EDIT: Moreover, provisional results for ZH shows 75% no (French) (http://www.20min.ch/ro/news/suisse/story/Revenu-de-base--les...)
I would argue that UBI itself will have unexpectingly positive effect on productivity by removing the bias causing people to justify unnecessary work because they need to make a living. This will give individuals the confidence to take the time and pursue further more value for society. There will always be laziness, of-course, but we try to achieve freedom for a change.
To bad. Would have been fun watching Switzerland try something new.
To counteract this, Basic income is a good idea because it allows for low risk job switching, furthering education and a small bureaucracy but extensive social safety net.
Some candidates:
- Open Source, and other forms of commons based production
We are allready comfortable with separating economic value created, from economic incentives to create. Commons based peer production, as Bekler calls it, is less apparent in other areas of the economy.
- Open Minded Systems thinking
I guess, as mostly engineers, we have a natural tendency to approach things as a systems engineering problem. Assuming basic income makes sense from that angle, perhaps were more likely to identify it as such.
- Front row seats to the future
We have a privileged position in seeing where the world I heading wrt technology and its consequences. Thus were probably a few steps ahead in predicting the social issues to be solved in the future.
If you are a wildly successful programmer you are automating the work of others, and putting them out of job.
Most of them though are working for the man and dream of a world in which they are free to do whatever they want, their dream job, without the risk that is involved on it (not being able to support yourself and your family).
So what they ask for is a "safety Net" that dilutes the risks onto others.
It did not work in the past, with communism, but they believe with the advances in automation, it could work today.
Personally I believe in "testing everything" before actually doing it.
Of course, leftist supporters of democracy will say this does not count and wasn't "democratic".
Please stop posting unsubstantive ideological comments to Hacker News. We don't want this level of discussion here. If you can't make a point thoughtfully, please don't post until you can.
The name-calling undermines your argument too. It's surprising to me how people who post comments like this don't seem to realize that they're diminishing their own cause in the mind of the reader.
https://bedingungslos.ch/de/pages/initiativtext (German)
The referendum committee made a non-binding proposal to give Fr. 2500 and if someone already earns Fr. 2500 they would not get additional money. The details would still need to be worked out by the parliament. In Switzerland being founded on consensus this means that after a «yes» a huge discussion would start how to implement the basic income. But it seems that the referendum is going to be rejected.
I'm probably running afoul of language/translation shear...
It's conditional yet it's still called "Minimum guaranteed income".
The values of those obligations may not match up - i.e. unskilled people maybe paid $7.25/hour for labor worth only $3 - but at least it's a reciprocal situation with shared obligations. I.e., we're all in this together.
But yeah, I don't understand why we need protectionism on the internet.
Remains to be seen who will want to actually do the (needed) jobs when staying at home is enough
I am in favour of Basic Income, but it's not such clear cut
Do the prospective brown people who might want to escape dire poverty (i.e., gain access to clean running water, flush toilets, and adequate food) just not count? Even if they counted only as 3/5 of a person, the numbers would still be drastically in their favor.
One is helping the ones that are already in the country, the other one isn't.
I'm not against helping, but there is a limit.
How do you propose to help "millions" when a lot of them can't even read http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/syrian-read-englis...
> Do the prospective brown people who might want to immigrate just not count?
Sure. Let's open the doors so we have more harassment of women, homosexuals and increased Anti-semitism.
Which is funny, because some of my ancestors came from the same region that is in trouble today (maybe they were "Infidels" and were kicked out because of that, who knows)
I propose helping the millions by not using violence to prevent them from performing labor for willing employers (an action which makes both them and the employer better off). That's all.
Sure. Let's open the doors so we have more harassment of women, homosexuals and increased Anti-semitism.
If we have adequate law enforcement, isn't this a problem that will rapidly solve itself? The solution is simple: immigrant assaults a homosexual, has his possessions confiscated, goes do jail and is then permanently deported on exit.
The ones who don't commit crimes can continue to peacefully trade with locals.
If you want to impose collective punishment over statistical disparities in crime, should we also collectively punish Black Americans due to their high crime rate?
Meanwhile, back in civilization, people aren't property. Similarly, I'm an American working for an Indian company attempting to disrupt multiple US industries. I have no plans to remain remotely attached to the US once our demographic issues start to collapse. Should the US create some sort of barriers to my exit?
It's probably a mistake for me to respond to something so vague, but do you think this will happen in USA before most of the rest of the world? Unless you "escape" to Africa, I don't see anywhere better-suited for riding out the Great Aging, in the long term.
If so, I'm curious about something. There are 2^{6 billion} possible subsets of humanity. Any individual human is a member of 50% of them. This makes it impossible to treat all corporates equally, so how do you determine which corporates have these rights and which don't?
(I use "corporatist" in the original sense, where a "corporate" is simply some collective of humans rather than specifically a state registered limited liability corporation. I'm also very deliberately NOT mentioning a scary associated word.)
Or more pithily: Maybe we need gardens to cultivate civilisation.
That said, I am very aware that this is probably a post-rationalisation for my tribal intuition that nearby people are more important than distant ones.
Do you have any argument against this? Coming up with arguments to keep out foreigners is easy. Coming up with arguments that don't also suggest kicking out blacks/hispanics/west virginia is tougher.
You can't kick people out because of existing contracts / promises based on citizenship.
Currently borders are leakier for big corporations / the rich, then they are for the individuals / poor. Corporations do have walled gardens across borders. A google employee is better off than a us citizen on average regardless of physical location in Palo Alto or Hyderabad.
If you did have open borders, you would probably end up with more privatized cities where all the land is spoken for by rich people. Eventually countries would be replaced by cities or corporations... I think we are kind of headed that way anyway in effect.
I'd like to see the USA get basic healthcare guarantee someday.
If you are a human being, you get $2000 per year in healthcare regardless of proof of income, etc. Just being a human being in need.
I hope the Bernie Sanders movement now focuses on the 26 states that are preventing health insurance for millions of people instead of trying to change the USA from the top down.