I have a gentle rule, which is when discussing (geo)politics with friends, we should try not to use Switzerland as an example. It's just too good, too rational, too sensible, too well run, in myriad ways that other countries should be able to emulate, but consistently and constantly don't.
There are a lot of things you can do in a rich, tiny, homogenous country that you can't do in a enormous, diverse country.
If my house were a country, I'd be in the top 0.1% of household internet speeds compared to other countries. Obviously everyone should be just like me!
It's so homogeneous that there are 4 national languages, one of which is german with tons of loval dialects. It's so homogeneous that each canton has own sub regulations. It's so homogeneous that in it's biggest city, Zurich, 34% of people are foreigners and 45% born outside of Switzerland.
But we can look at the opposite part of spectrum - Moldova, poorest country in Europe - 85% of infra is covered by fibre, >90% of population has option to get 1GBit fiber
There are always reasons why something can't be done, just like solving frequent school shooting problem in US
I remember moving there, hearing talks about how international Zurich was, and then realizing most of those foreigners were German. :-) It's diverse on paper (and probably to the Swiss), but it's not like it's a cosmopolitan melting pot.
Most immigration happens between neighboring countries e.g. the biggest immigrant group in Los Angeles are Mexicans.
If you exclude neighboring countries Zurich has a foreign born population share of 27% (compared to 18% of Los Angeles). If you only look at the last 10 years Zurich has foreign born non neighboring immigration of 10% (compared to 4% for Los Angeles).
If you only look at intercontinental migration then Los Angeles wins with 14% (compared to 8% of Zurich).
So yes Zurich is less cosmopolitan then LA, but most of it is just because the US has more diverse neighbors.
Americans are so used to racialized society that they tend to see "white" as a natural diversity/homogenity category, same with "Asian". And so they see "white Switzerland" as a homogeneous country.
That is absurd for anyone who lives in the Old World. Some of the worst wars in history were fought amongst people whom you wouldn't be able to tell apart in a sauna.
Heck, even Palestinians and Israeli Jews are physically very similar.
"White", "brown" etc. aren't meaningful categories in the Old World, with a few exceptions like South Africa. Most of the Old World is intensely tribal.
> There are a lot of things you can do in a rich, tiny, homogenous country that you can't do in a enormous, diverse country.
The US is a large collection of a whole bunch of rich (by global standards), tiny, fairly homogenous areas. We manage roads and schools at state, county, and local levels; we could do municipal broadband.
The US being different is no excuse - this is really just a shortsighted retelling of American Exceptionalism.
Intelligent folks look at a system and figure out ways they can adapt it to their own situation. You can take systems they use for rural areas and figure out ways to do it on your own. The US is enormous, but most folks live in cities. States are tiny portions of the US, and some of those states would likely mirror Switzerland in diversity, density, and size.
It wouldn't matter if the country had a population density similar to the US and was similar in many ways. It'd still need adaptation because of the differences in culture, laws, and so on.
The difficulties of American internet speeds have little to do with the total size of the country, but how far individual families are from each other. Spain is roughly the size of Texas, and Spain has a higher population, but you need a lot less fiber to each home, because metro areas are so much denser, and therefore it's so much easier to lay the fiber.
As usual, blame the suburbs, which make all kinds of infrastructure quite a bit more expensive per capita.
Right. It’s things like Baltimore (when I lived there) requiring that high speed internet had to roll out in poor areas first, before it could go into the rich neighborhoods.
But this was the early 2000s and the internet was still “new”. Only the richer areas cared and were willing to pay the price. Letting them have first (or even equal!) access would have made it easier to fund the rollout in low income areas.
Switzerland is one of the least homogenous countries in Europe! Four languages, relatively weak federal government with strong local (canton) governments. Most state services are handled on a localized (canton) level.
> There are a lot of things you can do in a rich, tiny, homogenous country that you can't do in an enormous, diverse country.
US states are little islands entirely capable of doing things like building infrastructure. There is no excuse for our states and their lack of movement, certainly not “the entire country is just tooooo big. whoa is us.” nonsense.
The enormous, diverse country excuse is a good thought-terminating cliche but doesn't really hold up when the population of such enormous, diverse country is well concentrated along the coasts, with very dense rich pockets.
Sweden, for example, is tiny in population compared to the US but geographically its size covers from north Florida to NYC, with barely 10m people it's able to have great public transportation, fiber coverage to 80-85+% of buildings, cellphone coverage to 98% of the population even in remote locations.
Being enormous like the US might leave a vast area of low density population centres but it doesn't excuse at all that the areas where the vast majority of people live are dense enough to have these services very well covered. That doesn't happen though so the issue isn't being an enormous, diverse country at all.
Tell me you know nothing about Switzerland without telling me you know nothing about Switzerland. Try asking a German Swiss what they think about a French Swiss or either about the Romansch.
I wonder if there is some sort of metric for classifying how similar cultures are to one another. Are e.g. German Swiss more dissimilar to French Swiss, than are Florida rednecks dissimilar to Compton gangsters?
> We also don’t have weapons in every household, if we’re talking myths
It all depends if you did your military service (which implies that you're swiss) and if you didn't decide to drop out of it or deemed as unfit. I don't think it's a myth really, it just happens to be that a lot of people don't do their military service and thus don't have to keep a weapon at home
You’re right about the source of the weapons wrong about how many there are. An estimated one in five household has firearms, with a significant percentage not having ammunition at home at all.
> I’m not even talking about the languages, we have 20% immigrants in the population, and an even larger part has foreign roots.
Both LA and Miami speak Spanish, no?
> We also don’t have weapons in every household, if we’re talking myths
Only the Republicans have weapons in every household?
I'm joking, I realise that you are Swiss, but until I looked at the username I wasn't sure which side of the comparison you were referring to. Goes to show that even the nations' stereotypes are not dissimilar!
Rich is a key attribute here. Tiny, not really. The key is dense. That makes terrestrial connections cheaper. A country with the population of the US and the richness and density of Switzerland would be just as capable of building out high speed internet connections. It would have ~38x the population of Switzerland, cost ~38x more to wire, and have ~38x the resources with which to do it.
Incidentally, the northeast of the US has a similar or greater population density as Switzerland and is pretty rich. That area, at least, should be as capable of this sort of thing. Doing it for, say, everybody in Alaska would be a bit tougher.
I don't know what diversity has to do with anything here. As far as I've seen, people from all sorts of different places and cultures seem to like high speed internet about equally well.
Lately I come to believe that success stories are not necessarily transferable. They can require some traits of the system that are not available. USA is made for corporations, so you just cant replicate internet access from Switzerland in USA. Corporations will fight you to death in courts and they will win. They are not going to lose their monopoly. To change that you need to change USA in a massive ways, I can't imagine how it can be done.
And yet, living in Switzerland after the UK involved one after another discovery of how well-ordered and -run a country could be. And then moving to Germany was like stepping back even further behind my memories of the UK.
I'm sure you could find examples of countries that do specific things as well as Switzerland; but I'm not aware of many places that do almost everything so excellently. (Maybe Japan, in many respects, but I lack sufficient direct experience to adequately judge.)
The healthcare system is actually one of the few things Switzerland isn't doing that well. It's somewhat "americanized", lots of "extra" insurances for random areas that will only accept you if you're healthy. Base insurance is regulated, has to accept all customers, and you're required to (pay for and) have it.
The FR and UK systems are better IMHO.
Just to be clear, the Swiss healthcare system is still very good. Just not perfect.
It might be (like many things in Switzerland) reassuringly expensive, but my original point was that on many objective metrics (e.g. longevity, avoidable mortality, cancer diagnosis and survival, waiting times, etc.) the Swiss healthcare system consistently achieves some of the best outcomes in the world.
The NHS (for example) costs less, and (depending on how you measure the value of health outcomes) might be more cost effective, but the outcomes aren't as good.
Nothing is insurmountable; however each one of us must play within the practical constraints of our local geographies (political, social, financial and physical). The parent comment probably means that Switzerland is in a positive on all axes unlike the rest of the world.
It’s politics. Boil most things down and the technical is inconsequential when compared to the politics.
Look at the political system of Switzerland and you will see a radically different setup.
And I think that’s the horse. The rest is cart. Yes they are rich but why? Yes they are relatively stable socially but why? Decentralised Canton government structure + direct democracy (referendums all the time for things that matter). That, I think, is why all the rest.
From a philosophical perspective, I love the cantonal/direct democracy model. But it's supported by a strong culture of awareness of current affairs, and involvement in the political process. (Of course, these two aspects are likely strongly synergistic.)
However, I'm not sure this unique political structure explains the trains running on time, the sensible choices made about the internet structure (per the article), the top-of-the-world healthcare system, the Swiss cheese science institute, or many other aspects of the broader country. It may partly explain the routinely excellent government bureaucracy (say that with a straight face anywhere else!), the convenient and reliable local public transport options, and the local police being well-resourced to the point of apparent boredom.
Heh, you were walking right up to my viewpoint and then turned away. A parliamentary democracy with proportional representation has way more influence IMO, and you'll find another couple of relatively well-run countries that work like that.
Switzerland uses a system similar to the original plan for Obamacare, where individuals are mandated to buy insurance, so if Switzerland is what you mean by "universal healthcare" then it's not only not impossible, but the USA already has a more voluntary take on the exact same concept.
The US system is more expensive partly because Americans throw a fit any time insurers try to constrain costs. The blowup over anesthetists is one example. Swiss insurers seem more able to tell doctors they're spending too much and to cut it out, without patients engaging in lobbying efforts to stop it. It's a cultural difference rather than an important difference in system design.
For me, this is the point of the article. People fought and the best decision was the result. And I suspect there's a fundamental cultural difference that makes the fight much less fair in America.
I'm an American and I've heard it often, usually with a bunch of strange excuses. We're too big, we're too diverse, there's too many states, and on. None of those actually make very much sense, but I've heard it all for why universal healthcare could never work in the US.
> President Donald Trump on Wednesday said it’s “not possible” for the federal government to fund Medicare, Medicaid and child care costs, arguing that it should be up to the states to “take care” of those programs while the federal government focuses on military spending.
I guess I'm pretty confused on what your point is here?
Universal Healthcare would be a new program in the US that would see a drastic tax increase, in that our healthcare spending currently going to insurance companies would instead go to a new federal agency. The amount of money companies and citizens spend on it may or may not also increase, but your quote has basically nothing to do with that.
It's like you're purposefully misreading what I'm saying. I wasn't saying it was scary. I was saying that Trump saying we can't afford current programs has nothing to do with universal healthcare. Universal healthcare would be funded through a large tax increase, the majority (or entirety) of which would be redirecting the money going to health insurance companies.
Again, no one has said this is impossible, which is my original point. Even Trump's idiotic rambling, which was mainly about child care costs, said nothing about the impossibility of universal healthcare.
We must live on opposite sides of US cause I’ve never heard anyone say that it is possible (except few politicans who thought it may be a good way to win an election but also knew that it was not possible and gave up once they got elected)
> I'm not aware of many places that do almost everything so excellently
Probably Singapore, which is sometimes described as the Switzerland of Asia anyway. 10 Gb symmetric fibre is broadly available at around SGD $50/month (about 35 EUR).
This is not to say that it isn't well run, but I think it would be fair to mention that Singapore is one of the most densely populated countries on Earth (#3 overall; #1 among countries with population >1 million.)
Separately, I am not totally sure just how widely deployed FTTH is in Switzerland. Here in Zürich it's everywhere, but zooming in on some rural place on init7's map tells quite a different story (perhaps not surprisingly).
Well and a little bit of research, tells me it’s far from universal across Switzerland. This article is so provable false in many of its premises it’s worthless - see my other comment.
Lets just exclude the best example, as everyone knows, we should never try to be the best. Being the best is dumb, liberal and possibly communist. Settling for 105th, that's freedom and democracy baby.
> Switzerland and California have the same population density. Why can’t CA build high speed rail?
Go find the last major Swiss route that was built, and compare its land acquisition difficulties to what happened with the California project. I'll rankly speculate that difference will be the meat of your answer.
Building infrastructure is a skill, a skill you have to constantly work on. If you do it enough and not once then you can learn to get good at it. There is a difference between a long term consistent execution of a infrastructure plan and a 'lets build high speed rail'.
I don't think rules and regulation in California are actually worse then in Switzerland.
For many reasons. Most of which have to do with government bureaucracy and incentives. HSR in California is thinly disguised jobs program with no real incentive or aim to actually build HSR.
CA’s high speed rail isn’t high speed by European standards and it looks on the way to cancelation or significant curtailment. We can’t even manage what y’all would consider slow rail.
I don't know but Swiss isn't the only train system that works but also Spain, Italy, France. Poland has a growing better train system . The swiss system has it's advantages but it is also very expensive.
The advantage of swiss system is fast transfers. Hsr would likely break this system (no point in arriving faster if your connection gets longer by 10-15min
I'm Swiss and I disagree, and so do many experts. First of all, arriving earlier is always good, because many people who get off on that stop still arrive earlier. Also, people who connect to a different mode of transit, such as Trams or S-Bahns very likely can catch an earlier connection.
In addition, if we built proper high speed lines, would could increase the frequency so much that it doesn't actually matter anymore.
So it doesn't actually break the system, it improves it.
What is this supposed to imply? us states are also a poor representation of humanity. This matters a great deal: switzerland is notoriously ethnically homogenous and unable to get along with anyone. Life on easy mode!
> The Swiss Air Force did not respond because the incident occurred outside normal office hours; a Swiss Air Force spokesman stated: "Switzerland cannot intervene because its airbases are closed at night and on the weekend. It's a question of budget and staffing." Switzerland relies on neighboring countries to police its airspace outside of regular business hours; the French and Italian Air Forces have permission to escort suspicious flights into Swiss airspace, but do not have authority to shoot down an aircraft over Switzerland.
My god, Switzerland is literally the least ethnically homogenous country on the continent (if we ignore tiny nations like Luxembourg, Lichtenstein and Malta), with a third of its population being foreign-born, which is percentage-wise double that of the US.
> Switzerland relies on neighboring countries to police its airspace outside of regular business hours; the French and Italian Air Forces have permission to escort suspicious flights into Swiss airspace, but do not have authority to shoot down an aircraft over Switzerland.
They were friendly enough with their neighbors to let their own Air Force have the nights and weekends off.
Passport control when I went from France to Switzerland was someone coming onto the train and yelling “anyone not allowed in Switzerland? No? Good!”
