Many journalists don't understand how Swiss political system works. We have a direct (not representative) democracy here. Most issues are resolved on the referendums happening every two months. All kinds of issues — new taxes, foreign relations, public projects — all is subject to direct vote of the Swiss people, who have all law-making authority here (systematically regulated).
The direct consequence of this otherwise excellent system is that basically anyone can collect 20,000 signatures and introduce his or her idea to the public voting, no matter how crazy it looks like. This is one of such cases.
We already had law suggestions like make all public transportation free (didn't pass), abolish Swiss army (many times — didn't pass), disallow construction of minarets (passed), etc.
The guaranteed basic income law has been rejected with a huge margin — because Swiss people have basic understanding of who would have been paying for this, and who wouldn't.
>The direct consequence of this otherwise excellent system is that basically anyone can collect 20,000 signatures and introduce his or her idea to the public voting, no matter how crazy it looks like. This is one of such cases.
You realize that this is a good thing? Power is unjustly concentrated among the rich in a representative democracy. This occurs because only the rich have enough money to campaign and advertise the "representative."
>and those who don't will vote to take others money for themselves.
The voting population is way too big for any meaningful bribe to be offered to a voter. Lets be honest, rich people work that system, voters only vote for candidates picked by rich people. The system is flawed and abusable... but only by rich people.
>The voting population is way too big for any meaningful bribe to be offered to a voter.
It's not specifically a bribe. It's policy designed to take money from those who earn more and give their money to those who earn less. In order for politicians to be elected they need to gain a majority vote, in order to get that vote they need to offer policies which claim to aid to largest number of people.
This already exists, in a variety of different forms.
>The system is flawed and abusable... but only by rich people.
> in order to get that vote they need to offer policies which claim to aid to largest number of people.
This isn't a bribe. You describe democracy working as it should. Policies are SUPPOSE to be made to aid the largest number of people. This is the point. In societies where the system works, rich minorities often feel this is unfair when they get taxed to hell. (It's not, and currently in our society, the rich are taxed less than poor people)
The system as it exists today does not benefit the majority. It benefits the elite. The elite choose who gets elected, by choosing who has necessary money to campaign. At the end of the day the politician owes more allegiance to the person who funded his campaign then the people who voted for him. The people live with it because said elected official utilizes charisma, complexity and politics to disguise the true nature of many things.
>Let's assume that's the case. What should we do?
I would suggest laws to prevent rich people from having too much influence on campaign funding. Ironically, I need to be rich to make that happen, and by then I'd probably be in a position where I have no desire to harm myself.
Thus when wealth inequality gets too extreme there's only one inevitable solution: Violence. Other than that it's something we have to live with, as wealth inequality is a feature of capitalism.
>This isn't a bribe. You describe democracy working as it should. Policies are SUPPOSE to be made to aid the largest number of people. This is the point. In societies where the system works, rich minorities often feel this is unfair when they get taxed to hell. (It's not, and currently in our society, the rich are taxed less than poor people)
The system as it exists today does not benefit the majority. It benefits the elite. The elite choose who gets elected, by choosing who has necessary money to campaign. At the end of the day the politician owes more allegiance to the person who funded his campaign then the people who voted for him. The people live with it because said elected official utilizes charisma, complexity and politics to disguise the true nature of many things.
Policies aid the majority, they let the 51 rule the 49.
Again let's assume you're right, the elite choose who are elected and can make the rules. Why are they being taxed? Why can't they use their influence so they get to keep their entire income?
>I would suggest laws to prevent rich people from having too much influence on campaign funding. Ironically, I need to be rich to make that happen, and by then I'd probably be in a position where I have no desire to harm myself.
Thus when wealth inequality gets too extreme there's only one inevitable solution: Violence. Other than that it's something we have to live with, as wealth inequality is a feature of capitalism.
So there are laws which supposedly benefit the rich and now you want to make more laws to fix the fact that the laws benefit the rich? You see the problem here?
>Policies aid the majority, they let the 51 rule the 49.
The people who control most of the world's wealth (over 50% of it) are equivalent to (or less than) 1% of the population. That 1% is what abuses the system. It's not 51 vs 49. It's the 99% vs. 1%.
That is not to say that there are no problems with the 51 vs 49, it's just a different set of problems entirely distinct and extremely lower in severity from the problem of rich people abusing the democratic system. In short the 51 vs the 49 percent is more of an acknowledged minor disadvantage of democracy rather than the unexpected critical flaw I describe above.
>Again let's assume you're right, the elite choose who are elected and can make the rules. Why are they being taxed? Why can't they use their influence so they get to keep their entire income?
Because you are illustrating an extreme that isn't the reality. The rich can't abuse the system to the point where it becomes a fascist empire. In the end it's still a democracy, and structurally there are certain limits to how far anyone can twist that concept.
The rich abuse the system to the point where they have MORE power, not ultimate power. To do so would ruin the economy structurally. They need laborers to spend and work in order to keep their status. All people, the kings and emperors included, are fully aware of the violent and economic repercussions when you only tax poor people. The rich therefore can't completely eliminate their taxes, instead they use complexities to disguise their alternative tax advantages. The majority know the term as "tax loopholes."
>So there are laws which supposedly benefit the rich and now you want to make more laws to fix the fact that the laws benefit the rich? You see the problem here?
Yes I do see the problem. More laws equals greater complexity, and a system with too much redundancy. Perhaps replacing existing laws are a better alternative, but that is not how our system works. Other than that there is no problem.
Swiss people, who have all law-making authority here
Law making is done by the two chambers of parliament, National- and Ständerat. General constitutional amendments as well as particular laws can make their way to the electorate but that does not happen automatically.
Edit: If by "introducing his or her idea to the public voting" you mean constitutional amendments.. they require 100k signatures, not 20k. Why don't you look these things up, patriot?
> because Swiss people have basic understanding..
> Many journalists don't understand how Swiss political system works..
> this otherwise excellent system..
Right.. swiss people are so smart. Like that one time where they didn't have any problems with institutional child-slavery for decades.. and the other time where they started to trample on rights of religious minorities.. I could go on.
Even though you're right that most laws are passed by the chambers, the people still have the power to put them up for voting (or put a second law up for voting that invalidates the first) by just gathering a couple of thousand signatures. In that sense the people really do have the final word in legislative matters.
Obviously swiss people are not born smarter than the rest of the world, but the education standard is quite okay and even though populism exists (as everywhere), Switzerland is doing better than any of it's neighbors right now, thanks to the decisions that the people have made.
The child-slavery thing is a black stain in our history, and we're aware. You can stop throwing rocks down from your glass house now.
Well, direct democracy isn't much good when the majority of people aren't able to think for themselves. Or think at all. Being Swiss myself, I sometimes get that impression at least.
> The guaranteed basic income law has been rejected with a huge margin
Source please? I've seen several people say this, but inevitably they were conflating the basic income proposal with the 10x salary-cap proposal, which indeed was rejected by a substantial margin. I was under the impression that the basic income proposal had not, in fact, been voted on yet.
That's correct. The voting will be in 2016. If he means that many people are rejecting the idea, I can't confirm that. I've heard and read at least as many positive comments as negative ones.
In the "Would you be willing to fight for your country?" image [1] that's been circulating, Switzerland comes in at 39% (and the US at 44%). That said, I cannot account for the methodology used in this alleged poll.
Lies, damned lies and surveys. The actual question was "If there were a war that involved <country>, would you be willing to fight for your country?" which is much more ambiguous. For example, technically the Iraq War involved my country (our PM was the butler in the meeting in Azores where they declared war, and we deployed troops there), but it wasn't a fight for our country like the short version of the question implies.
Several US states have, let's say, prolific referendums which likewise result in large numbers of wonky proposals on the ballot.
Many state legislatures themselves (the bar for entry in some cases can be very low) often have absurd proposed laws that journalists tend to exaggerate the reality of because a small number of nutjobs manage to get themselves elected.
Swiss cantons are a lot smaller than even Rhode Island (by area) or Wyoming (by population). From memory Switzerland has 5 million people and 32 cantons. Municipalities are also free to secede and form their own canton or join a neighbouring canton. Referenda aren't just a national thing either, they have them at every level of government. This all probably contributes to how well it works, that and the extremely strong political culture of consensus, and the way the federal government is organised. The Premiers of each canton sitting in forum are the Swiss federal government, and all decisions are made unanimously. It's a very conservative system.
The only country I've ever visited that gave the same impression of having the same level of organisation and competence as Switzerland was Singapore.
The direct consequence of this otherwise excellent system is that basically anyone can collect 20,000 signatures and introduce his or her idea to the public voting, no matter how crazy it looks like. This is one of such cases.
We already had law suggestions like make all public transportation free (didn't pass), abolish Swiss army (many times — didn't pass), disallow construction of minarets (passed), etc.
The guaranteed basic income law has been rejected with a huge margin — because Swiss people have basic understanding of who would have been paying for this, and who wouldn't.