Dear Wes Burt,
Since your correspondent who now came out as a "U.K.subject" insists on
staying anonymous, I'll call him "Mr X" for brevity.
It must be a very rare and strange case to get expelled from Switzerland
after residing there for 16 years (in this period he could have been
naturalized). It seems that Mr X's expulsion has more to do with his
own personal behavior than with the Swiss system. If he felt his human
rights were violated, he could have sued in Strasbourg and easily won
if his claim was valid.
While his personal past may explain his grudge against the Swiss system,
it cannot justify spreading false claims about the country and collective
name-calling against the Swiss people on international lists. It seems
strange that Mr X remains "Director of a Swiss corporation" and keeps
sending money to Switzerland, if he dislikes materialism and the Swiss
so much.
Let me first reply to his response and then answer your question.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Begin reply to Mr. X's response <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
Mr X aka "a U.K.subject" wrote:
> Switzerland is a poor country in terms of material resources and space.
What's the point of criticizing a country's natural features like its
amount of mineral resources and its size ? I thought this debate was
about political systems. Isn't it of special merit that the Swiss
achieved good wealth *without* colonizing half the planet in order to
grab land space and resources, like Mr X's system did for centuries ?
> I am saying that GDP
> statistics do not value human rights, freedoms etc. You can ask any number of
> human rights organizations this, I used to work for one at the UNHCR.
This is trivial, but the point is that human rights are respected much better
in a direct democracy with a solid welfare system and general wealth than
in the countries Mr X praised (Gabon etc.).
> I am talking
> about the poverty of materialism, something Mr Reuss will have constitutional
> problems understanding.
Those who know me know that I'm very far from being a materialist.
If Mr X wants to complain about the poverty of materialism, there are
much more appropriate targets than Switzerland, including his own country
(first Captain Cook &Co., then Maggie T and now the "Turd Way").
> I would not dispute with Mr Reuss that I find rich people
> uninteresting because they are (i) predictable - they are trying to stay rich
> and (ii) stupid, as that is all they do. The capitalist calculus makes robots
> of us all.
I even agree with Mr X that most millionaires are boring and that "the
capitalist calculus makes robots of" some individuals. What I object to
is Mr X's sweeping generalization to a whole people. (racism?)
> In terms of square feet, most swiss people live in substandard accommodation.
Not too surprising in a small country, is it? I agreed with this, but
suggested that housing quality can be more important than quantity.
> I do
> not dispute they may have more dishwashers than the Portugese or Ethiopians.
> However the Portugese and Ethiopians produce great runners and poets because
> they have space to run about and great language.
I didn't dispute this, but continue to dispute the suggestion that wealth
is detrimental to human development. Btw, Switzerland has the highest number
of Nobel Prize winners per capita IICC.
> I would prefer to live in Tanzania or Sudan than
> Monaco or Liechtenstein for the same reason, despite the fact that the latter
> would be classified as rich countries and the former as poor.
Mr X is free to go there and to stop complaining about his expulsion from
the country he doesn't like anyway. Let's see for how long he will *live*
there.
> The swiss code civil and code penal incorporate no human rights to my
> knowledge other than the right of creed or confession and some rights as to
> property and occupation.
The code civil and the code penal are just not the appropriate places for
human rights legislation -- human rights are legislated in the Constitution
and in international conventions. It's too big a stretch to conclude from
the above that human rights are not respected in Switzerland.
> You might not incorrectly read into Mr Reuss' own note below some of the
> inherent racism
It was Mr X who used the racist wording "white protestant workaholics",
and in a pretty derogatory way.
> of the swiss project of 'perfection', which excludes all
> those who are not part of that project. This intolerance I cannot abide.
Switzerland accepts one of the highest rates of foreigners, refugees and
asylum-seekers in Europe, spends billions of dollars to take care of them,
and affords a solid welfare system for what Mr X would probably call
"non-workaholics". How can he say this excludes and is intolerant ?
> The swiss had a brave project, to create a perfect world,
> codified in their constitution of the last century. However, assuming it to be
> perfect, they (i) got very smug (ii) believed that foreigners were inferior
> (that's you by the way - did you read below?) and (iii) didn't discover that
> it would still need to change.
Everything is relative. Mr X's system, aka "*Great* Britain" (smugness?),
also had its own project to create a perfect world (perfect for the British
ruling class *only*, unlike the Swiss model of direct democracy etc.),
BUT UNLIKE THE SWISS, the British system set out to harass half the planet
the tough way, killing and enslaving millions of those "inferior" foreigners.
Now *that's* what I'd call a materialist and racist system. It's terribly
ironic that this Brit now complains about the harmless Swiss project... but
I guess such aggressive interference is an integral part of an imperialist
attitude. Talk about a "need to change" !
> I have no idea whether the eminent and respected
> journalist and parliamentarian Mr Ziegler is a liar or not. His books seem
> laregly factual.
To outsiders, they may *seem* *largely* factual... that's the trick of all
propaganda. Mr Ziegler's refined mix of lies, half-truths and distortions
is proverbial and its unfactualness is well-documented.
> You will note that the 'project' of the average 'protestant' worker in a
> country such as Switzerland is to get enough money to not have to work,
^^^
Didn't Mr X say earlier that the Swiss protestant workers are "workaholics"?
Why would a workaholic want to *not* have to work, as Mr X says above ??
> to retire and use one's leisure time in chosen pursuits of little financial
> reward.
Why wait until retirement? What's the weekend&holidays for ? ;-)
(Hint: Any Swiss can stop working *anytime*. He will just have to sell
his Mercedes after a while, but the protestant workaholics will pay his
food&shelter&TV for his whole lifetime. It's called a welfare system.)
> Before the western introduction of medicine in Africa, this is largely what
> people did, and probably what Mr Reuss' forebears did in their neolithic
> cave in Nyon.
Yeah, the EU would surely want to see the Swiss return to the stone-age.
They already bombed Yugoslavia there. Independent, non-aligned models
of states are just so unpopular with the imperialist bloc! They gotta
be wiped out. The EU is just tired of this nasty competitor and
model of direct democracy, federalism and minority rights to which the
EU's citizens could refer in their critique of the EU. Also, the EU
desperately needs our money for their megalomaniac projects (and that's
the reason why they won't bomb us back to the stone-age, but swallow us).
So, away with this model in the middle of Europe !
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> End reply to Mr. X's response <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Begin reply to WesBurt's question <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
Wes, I'm sorry that I didn't reply to your original question in "Welcome
to America III". I planned to reply, but since I'm not an economist and
so far didn't look very deep into economics, while there are lots of
economists on your lists, I figured others would be more qualified to
answer your question. Since nobody seemed to care, I'll give it a try now:
(so that those who didn't care to reply earlier can come out of their
closets to complain about my reply..)
Wes wrote:
> [...] If
> we add to Figure 1 such hard to get data as the 1% unemployment rate and the
> 0% inflation rate in Switzerland and compare that to the other countries it
> seem clear to me that the Swiss are doing something in their public policy,
> which other nations are neglecting.
First let me give you those "hard to get" ;) data: As of September 1999,
the official unemployment rate in Switzerland is 2.7% (down to 0.3% in some
cantons), and the inflation rate is about 1% IIRC.
How is this achieved ? (a) Jobs are where the money is, and
(b) low inflation is where stability is.
(a)
The money mainly comes from industry (strong exports), banking and tourism.
Industrial export is facilitated by high-quality products and a good
educational system, banking is facilitated by stability, and tourism is
facilitated by a nice landscape with quality infrastructures and a secure
social environment.
(b)
The stability comes from a unique political system of consensus (broad
coalition gov't), federalism, direct democracy, armed neutrality /
non-alignment, and minority rights.
> Should we not conclude that the establishments in the U.S.
> (Labor Department), the U.K., and Switzerland find their Common Cause in
> keeping the public everywhere either indifferent to, or oblivious of, the
> role of the market mechanism in determining the performance of nations as
> plotted on Figure !? Why should this be? What advantage is there to any
> faction of any society to run their economies at 2 to 3% inflation and 4 to
> 10% unemployment with ever growing deficits and debt service, when there are
> nations operating at 0% inflation and 1% unemployment to serve as examples?
Point (a)-1 (exports) is harder to achieve for a large country like the U.S.
simply because it would take several planets to export the same per-capita
amount of goods to. Also, the public school system seems to be a problem
in U.S. and U.K. Also for point (a)-2 (banking), the size of the pie is
too small for the same per-capita banking, and the internal stability is
lower. For point (a)-3 (tourism), the landscape would be fine but the
secure social environment seems to be a bit of a problem in a country
where some tourists can't even get from the airport to the hotel before
being shot (ok, ok, a rare case, but you get the idea..).
Point (b), the political system, should be easier to copy, even for large
entities like US or EU, and would definitely be desireable for the vast
majority of citizens in these entities, but alas, their oppressive and
anti-democratic ruling class does not like the Swiss model.
Sincerely,
Christoph Reuss
