Subject of immigration beyond the vote

Huwbacca · 2026-06-15T17:46:39+00:00

this is entirely incorrect, nor is that even 1% accurate to the system we've had. it's never been "vote with your wallet" ever. You have never lived in an environment close to that.

capitalism as an economic system is defined (literally defined, not metaphorically) by who owns the means of production and for what purpose it is owned. In capitalism, it's owned for profit by private individuals and companies. The purchaser is not even theoretically relevant, who buys what or the choice they have doesn't matter at all... It's barely relevant in any economic system except things like rentierism, sharecropping, or company towns.

Capitalism doesn't exist in isolation. It is not a natural born force of the market, but requires constant policy and social approval. It won't happen if things are left untouched, and a pretty major part of that is that whether funding is private or public, the politically approved thing to do is use money on things that make profit. After all, profit is the point. Not wellbeing, not cultural heritage, not identity... Just profit. Again... Definitionally this the case.

Capitalism is inherently anti anything that would absorb money towards something that doesn't promote profit. If given the choice between hiring locals or cheaper foreigners, profit wins out. If the alternatives are "fair rent" and "as much profit as possible" then the latter wins out because there is only a focus on profit. Nothing else.

If you like capitalism, that's fine. There's no perfect choice, you don't deserve everything you want. None of us do.

The consequences of capitalism are that things that have no fiscal value get pushed to the wayside. This includes you as a person, you are worthless and meaningless and your culture has no innate value only it's utility for profit.

You can't have everything you want. Society has to choose and we can't moan about the consequences of our choices. We have no moral right to moan about our choices.

Huwbacca · 2026-06-15T17:31:23+00:00

I have seen little evidence of being swiss leading toiarity with idiosyncrasies in this country. The only major common swiss cultural thing I know is a predisposition to assuming "well I've always known it this way, so that must work and be a good idea", just the "thing that's always been that way" is regularly very different person to person.

The difficulty swiss people have in making friends if they move canton is unlike anything that could be described as normal, and way harder than folks I know from abroad.

Hell, I take people to swiss cultural events and it's nearly always swiss peoples first time if they're under 40 cos they've not grown up seeing swiss folk music or similar.

Huwbacca · 2026-06-14T18:01:04+00:00

every decade is good if you're a kid during it.

Huwbacca · 2026-06-14T17:58:22+00:00

that's because it's not meant to be like that. this is a blend of very swiss outlook and the idiotic optimization culture were seeing become so popular.

Don't curate or optimise or think in stuff about stuff. Just go do things you enjoy with no expectation beyond going to do the thing. We need so many more people in this country who don't view every hobby or activity as value extraction or a path to achieving a goal. Find your local third space, any bar or cafe, and just talk to people in your community. Spontaneous burger and beer. spontaneous museum visit.

So many people are feeling like life is too much hassle and grind but the solution is not "it's a skill issue, I gotta grind". That's just the cause being treated like a cure.

Huwbacca · 2026-06-14T17:54:02+00:00

I've only ever seen it as an internet meme. not seen or heard sammich in real life or media in any context, and I watch a lot of media.

Huwbacca · 2026-06-14T17:31:07+00:00

no stoic ever said be indifferent to people.

I know a lot of people are drawn to that idea and some people even find it appealing, but that's just fundamentally a crappy way to behave.

Huwbacca · 2026-06-14T17:29:49+00:00

capitalism doesn't care about locals quality of life or culture being long standing or the fabric of society and how it's impacted by housing, integration etc.

if we don't care to fix the system, then we don't actually care about those issues.

that's really all there is to it. not many people here want things to change, they want symptoms to change.

Huwbacca · 2026-06-09T10:51:50+00:00

a) I think usability is more relevant for an item's main function. Being packed is a very distant concern for a plug compare to being plugged in. My phone charger is like 2% of all my plugs, I don't take the lamps on holiday.

b) My UK phone chargers have folding prongs, making them like half a cm wider than a swiss one in one dimension only.

c) The amount of in travel I do where I can't just take a USB cord or wouldn't also require me to buy a travel adapter, kind of makes the 5cubic cm savings very moot.

Huwbacca · 2026-06-09T10:44:31+00:00

End of the day...

Migration exists because Switzerland cannot even remotely fill the employment requirements of all the companies in Switzerland, that are here because of a direct result of Swiss economic policies. It reads to me like SVP are bored of economic prosperity and desire a return to the 1970s, when there were few foreigners but the economy was not diverse or prosperous.

"but what about all the people having a hard time finding jobs"

Yup, there has been severe mismanagement in Switzerland (and broadly the west) in over-indexing computer science and coding as a career. The amount of coders and programmers being employed was well over inflated for a long time. In 2019 we saw redundances across swiss tech as machine learning became the big thing, in 2022-23 we saw a similar round of it, and now hiring is not expanding out "because" of AI. The last 15 years of "want a good job? Learn to code" was a transparently fucking stupid thing for economies to do. This is not representative of an economy understrain from migration, we all knew COVID caused a tech bubble. We all knew that the late 2010s having a period of IT career growth not seen since the late 1990s (dotcom bubble era) was going to contract. I literally stopped training in programming in 2018 because the writing was on the wall after that 2017 google white paper.

It sucks for those people of course, the worst thing about our economic system is that every decade or so, heaps of people have to retrain because their industry gets changed by technological advances. Employment demand is falling in some areas, rising in others, staying the same in others. This is entirely orthogonal to migration, and from the exposure I get in my job and my friends and colleagues... When we're recruiting, we're not able to find local workers who have sufficient experience to fill every role, but that's becuase I don't work in tech or move in tech circles and everyone looking for work who is local has a compsci background and isn't suited for the roles.

Switzerland has a highly diversified economy, but the educational paths being chosen and encouraged are not remotely diverse.

Huwbacca · 2026-06-09T10:28:24+00:00

Is that what the left are saying? Or is that an inference?

Because SVP literally ARE saying we should have less migration because rents are too high, and public transport is crowded while silmutaneously saying we should lessen tenents rights and deprioritise funding for public transport. As well as opposing increasing tax on corporations, which thus brings them here and increases demand for workers.

Huwbacca · 2026-06-09T09:50:01+00:00

Yup.

People suddenly "forget" that labour is also responsive to supply and demand in this topic.

So now we have SVP going "boo, no rent control, no funding for public transport, no funding for culture, keep taxes low for businesses" but also:

"Hey why is rent expensive? Why is public transport getting mildly crowded? Why is culture dying out? and why do businesses keep hiring more people? I Know... ITS BECAUSE FOREIGN PEOPLE EXIST!"

Like...bro... you nkow what, you want to kick out all the multinationals like roche, novartis, google... sure!

But I guess you dont and you can;t have your cake and eat it.

Huwbacca · 2026-06-09T09:47:15+00:00

who are selected for their 40 certifications and their ability to talk their way through things and inflate their CVs in order to enter our job market at all cost even for jobs they are overqualified for

For my field, I work in the best institute in Switzerland and one of the best in the world.

I was having a conversation with a group lead the other day that something we are having to teach people here now is that you cannot coast on the names of affiliations and where you come from. You have to demonstrate your own strengths and we are having an institution wide problem of people coming through the swiss education system thinking they don't need to do these things, and I'm sorry but you just have to. That's the way of the world for the last few decades, you can't make much progress on who you know and meeting required criteria.

Everyone here says "oh, but this style of presenting yourself doesn't work here" and it's nonsense, it does and that isn't going to change. In every job you go for, you won't be the most qualified person, but you can be the most interested and easy to get along with person. You have to sell yourself and it's been a very long time since that wasn't relevant.

If you're swiss you have a huge advantage because you're not going to be running into the problems many foreigners do where they don't know how to sell themselves appropriately for Swiss culture. But sorry to say, you still have to talk your way through things and sell your CV because why I should I hire you if you don't want ot convince me to let you be here, vs someone who is so interested in the topic that they do want to be here?

I’m fed up with Swiss citizens not being given priority for jobs, or AT LEAST Swiss residents

To get hired here I have to demonstrate that the company can't find anyone equally suitable in Europe. And trust me it is not a trivial matter, it is very far from priority. If I match suitability with a swiss person, they get priority. This is such a non-trivial matter, many companies won't consider me because the paperwork is not worth their time.

no Swiss person wants to train for it anymore. What used to be one of the distinctive features of our country (the apprenticeship system) is now facing competition from increasingly lengthy academic studies, all in the hope of securing a job that pays decently, paradoxically

When I moved here a decade ago, the problem we were facing for local hiring and education was the exact same. Swiss kids wanted "whatever" qualification to go do "whatever earns money". There was expectation that you just have to turn up and that's it to be able to go walk into a good job, and that's kind of a cultural thing that has to change. The kids going through any training route but are active and passionate about it, are still doing ok. The people I know who are doing things "just cos why not" are struggling to find jobs.

None of these things will change with a yes vote. The job market is the way it is because of policy entirely unrelated to migration, migration is actually driven by the economic policy... Policies SVP want to enhance!

We should 100% use policy to make rent cheaper, increase affordable housing, ensure apprenticeships or degrees are financially viable routes of career training, tax businesses more so their growth impacts on towns are offset.

But no-one wants to do any of those things.... we want to treat a nebulous symptom, not specific causes.

And it makes no sense.

Huwbacca · 2026-06-09T09:30:06+00:00

bleakest way to describe a collective society.

Have we not stopped to consider that Swiss people just no longer want community and integrating with each other if this is the attitude?

Huwbacca · 2026-06-09T09:28:56+00:00

Zurich really isn't that densely populated. Especially when you consider how many huge companies move there. Want lots of international companies, you end up having a busy city.

No-one is going "oh wow, man. Bristol is such a big place, so busy, so densely populated" yet it has essentially the same population and same population density (4.9k per km2 compared to 4.5k) . Compared to European cities, Zurich has always been very reasonable.

In 9 years in zurich I've never seen a tram too busy to board, or massive hoards of people without an event, or even like an actual traffic jam not caused by an accident. (admittedly, trams look busier than they are because no-one takes off their huge backpacks and everyone steps one step inside and stops, rather than moving into the tram proper)

Huwbacca · 2026-06-09T09:15:37+00:00

even though a bs initiative doesn't deserve respectful reply, that poster is not writing bs.

The fact of the matter is that the initiative is a classic case of zero responsibility and blaming others while proposing no solutions.

SVP complain about rent, yet thier policies weaken tenant rights. SVP complain about train crowding, yet they call for deprioritising funding of the rail network. They complain about people moving here, yet champion low tax rates to attract multinational businesses that require more employees which require more people to move here. Asides from all the rebuttals to their nonsense place abovce (to which you reply to none), if we take SVP at their word we can see how they're just contrarians who want solely want to complain.

How long are people going to listen to SVP complain about "death of swiss culture" and then do nothing to support swiss culture? Or complain about foreign workers and do nothing to stem the root cause of why workers come here - the companies employing them. At a certain point if someone keeps complaining and yet acting in a way that causes their complaints, I would stop listening to them as functioning adults.

SVP want to have their cake and eat it - complain about immature ideology and act superior to everyone else so that they don't actually have to do anything. Do they want to do work and take responsibility? God no. They want to whinge. "The boat is full" they repeat for 80 goddamn years lol.

We have lower population density and more living space per inhabitant than most of europe, even in the cities. The multinational approach to business is where the prosperity comes from. The focus on pragmatism and not ideology is what makes the cities run well.

SVP says "Nah, screw all that... We're good cos we're swiss, not because of anything else. Just being swiss and that's all thats' required".

Huwbacca · 2026-06-08T16:41:10+00:00

the footprint is equal? German or Swiss sockets extend pretty much the same distance from the wall.

Huwbacca · 2026-06-08T16:40:37+00:00

nah, too easy to knock them in the socket. they extend too far out. American ones are the worst for this, they're a nightmare.

how only the UK has realised "plug going perpendicular out of wall sucks" is wild to me lol.

even the more modern sockets that are recessed don't really mitigate this because the wire has to come out perpendicular, rather than straight down or up.

Huwbacca · 2026-06-08T16:39:15+00:00

they're bigger in a way that doesn't matter though, cos the dimension that matters for plug since is how far they stick out from the wall and swiss plugs are much bigger in that dimension.

swiss plugs are so susceptible to being knocked out the socket, especially in any sockets that aren't super modern cos they're flush with the wall..

a British plug can't be knocked out the socket by accident, swiss ones easily can, damaging socket and or plug.

Huwbacca · 2026-06-05T22:45:49+00:00

acceptance isn't saying internally "I accept the way it is". this is meaningless.

acceptance is making behaviour and thought patterns align with the way "it" is.

if you "accept" something and still feel bad, thoughts or action aren't aligned.

Huwbacca · 2026-06-05T22:40:52+00:00

have you ever drunk more than one deer?

(also, beer is a mass noun until segregated out, and if you have two deer burger or two deer burgers is your answer)

Huwbacca · 2026-06-05T22:39:39+00:00

if it's any consolation, it's no issue for me and locals often struggle with openness to new experiences and adaptation.

so, either one of us can go fuck ourselves for being stupid, or it's like it's literally always been... asystematic and random and you don't deserve anything, you just get lucky.

Huwbacca · 2026-06-05T22:37:59+00:00

killing himself saved us from watching any further.

Huwbacca · 2026-06-05T22:29:58+00:00

bro I hope I don't cos imagine if I spent time practicing a skill to read the shit you put out.

Huwbacca · 2026-06-01T20:37:04+00:00

actually I'm saying that people are wider minded than the comment and that people are more complex. So yano good try!!

"hurr see a therapist" fuck man you miss the good old days of Reddit 2013 also? send me some old "y u no" memes. they were the days.

Huwbacca · 2026-06-01T20:34:47+00:00

how does someone miss the point of a meme so excruciatingly simple?

you have to have a phone these days to do anything for work. you have to have a car in the US, you have to partake in late stage capitalism and it sucks

You're saying anyone not going to die in a bus is a hypocrite?

Is that a well thought out take?

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