Since when has Ukraine's defense against the russian invasion been a "proxy war"? Your very first sentence destroyed any credibility the rest of your comment had (not that there was much worth reading anyway).
> The country that’s getting 55% of its state budget from the EU isn’t a proxy. Not to mention the munitions, the weapons, the training, and above all the access to the US’ trillion dollar ISR and satcom network.
If the Kremlin calculated that European countries would just back off it was a very bad call indeed.
Any reasonable leadership would have cut their losses yet here we are.
Odesa is still on the cards: one of the most important ports on the Black Sea, and a long-time cultural and historic prize.
And Putin wants control of the entire Black Sea coast, and Moldova. Furthermore there are clear signs of aggression toward the Baltics, which may be interpreted as preparation for a similar invasion.
I don't think that's historically correct. Maybe they were stopped after taking the natural gas and oil fields they were interested in. The initial goals succeeded.
I'm not saying Russia fared well since, but the initial progression was a blitzkrieg of specific POIs, which meandered and stalled at secondary and tertiary goals (like Odesa) due to resistance.
Russia doesn't have the manpower or technical capability to repeat the same maneuver for lesser goals, alone.
In the early stages of the invasion, the russians had plans for an amphibious assault on Odesa[1]. These were scrapped when they realized they'd be obliterated before even touching shore. Nevertheless, the orcs still talk frequently of "returning" "Odessa" to mother russia.
Do you have an example of someone doing that? I suppose the argument would be we wouldn't know - but personally I don't buy it. It's possible to not be "famous" as a billionaire, but it's not possible for people in your life not to know.
Projectors and electronic whiteboards elevated lessons for me. Ever see a science teacher try to draw a galaxy or nebula on a blackboard, and try to describe the awesomeness of it using just words?
Math concepts, especially visualizations, become so much more accessible.
One math teacher in my school used an analog overhead projector as part of his workflow: he would write math on a long transparency roll, sitting at his desk, facing the class, so every student could see exactly how their work should be reasoned-about and laid out properly. He could rewind (literally) to any previous point in the lesson.
As always, it comes down to one's ability to use the tools effectively.
Why would you assume the population cap is arbitrary? There's a calculable limit to the population an area of land can sustain. (Yes, some agricultural practices can mitigate that, but that should also be weighed against culture and history, and how much change is acceptable.)
Other variables to factor in would include cultural/esthetic ones: how much would a population tolerate a reduction in the idyllic/scenic nature of their landscape, merely to accommodate crops for a rising population?
(This is what I referred to as "quality of life" in another post.)
That math is about animals in a fixed climate who don't do trading. Swiss people do.
And that "how much would a population tolerate a reduction in the idyllic/scenic nature of their landscape" is a very arbitary factor that will strongly depend on who you ask.
You're basically reluctant to accept the fact that such a calculation is possible. That says more about you than the competence of mathematicians and ecologists...
Can you bring one claim of "mathematicians and ecologists" that their calculation would not be arbitrary?
Those things ain't absolutes and human society is not made up of numbers and not calculable. So you can make approximations. And they can be useful or not. But you cannot calculate the perfect size of a human society. That is just arbitrary.
> There's a calculable limit to the population an area of land can sustain. (Yes, some agricultural practices can mitigate that, but that should also be weighed against culture and history, and how much change is acceptable.)
Ah yes, folks fighting the good Malthusian fight since 1798, and yet to see a win. LoL. [1]
We may also discover that einstein-rosen bridges exist [1] or that aliens exist or that magic is real or that astrology works. Hopefully none of these things are keeping you up at night.
Also, broken clocks, twice a day right, etc etc. Clocks still broken.
> Then what??
Plenty of dystopian sci-fi available for your reading/viewing pleasure. [2]
It's being proposed in order to maintain quality of life. No one wants to be overcrowded. This is a sane solution: collectively agree on the maximum tolerable population. Then it's down to individual responsibility to obey the norms of one's society.
Edit: unless you're Swiss, your opinion is irrelevant. Swiss voters have a right to decide how they want to live. They're not beholden to EU laws; they can make their own sovereign decisions, and everyone must respect that.
I think I'm totally missing the explanation how my quality of life will increase when Swiss products cannot be sold in the EU anymore because of the price hikes and double bureaucracy - including no more cross-border work. Job loss doesn't say much "quality of life", nor does higher prices on imports.
You are assuming there won’t be free trade agreements. People need to stop saying what happened with Brexit will happen with Switzerland. Two completely different countries governed in two completely different ways.
The EU would be really stupid to give you a good deal. Like, for self preservation purposes alone it would be really beneficial if Switzerland would just really suffer after leaving the EEA especially because a lot of shit was going down in Europe and the world after brexit. Can’t really point at the cost of living in the uk and say that’s brexit when petrol is almost 2€ in Germany as well.
But a Switzerland that just collapses surely but surely? That’s gonna send a message.
What products are you thinking? Chocolate and cheese are actually not that relevant as some people want it to be. Gold trade, software, banking however is unlikely to decrease a lot no matter the border rules.
I take this question as a joke, it would be regrettable to know so little about Switzerland yet comment like this. Because more than half of the Swiss exports are chemical and pharma, then come machinery and electronics and... and yeah, food altogether is 3% as well.
Maybe not a legally smart move, but morally... when was it signed? Perhaps way before some EU countries decided to stop enforcing their borders beyond the performative level? And since these agreements basically force countries (especially rich countries with socialist systems) to somewhat share the burden of that choice they didn't make, I don't blame them in the least.
These agreements do not force countries to share that burden.
Freedom of movement for EU citizens. Migrants and asylum seekers don’t have the right to live and work in Switzerland because of our EU agreements.
A migrant or asylum seeker living in Germany has 0 right to move to CH.
We do have some asylum obligations from the Dublin accords and from global human rights laws, but those we can regulate ourselves separately anyway. EU doesn’t care. Countries within EU do it already.
> There’s never anything sane with population caps by fiat
Why? It’s repressive if done to cap a natively-growing population, since that means government controlling reproduction (à la one-child policy). But government has controlled immigration for generations.
I’m asking as someone who is genuinely on the fence on this vote.
Saying that you’re going to cap your population necessarily implies you’re going to take policy measures to grow no further than the capped amount, which are by their nature, repressive.
That said I did see in some other comments earlier after I posted this that this is a back door way to axe the Swiss-EU bilateral agreements all at once. I don’t know how true that is, but if that’s the goal, Switzerland doesn’t need to take such a back door approach. Just put it on the ballot like everything else.
It was put on ballot as such, and overwhelmingly (by Swiss standards) rejected. Now it's time for trying different backdoors (not the first try either). It's a constant circus, EU and the EU citizens being the demon eating at the Swiss well-being.
Immigration is being controlled, EU immigrants require a work contract to come here (and consequentially 80% are employed with the rest split between spouses, kids and students). I strongly prefer this system over having some random bureaucrat in Berne decide who is "valuable" and who isn't.
> Why? It’s repressive if done to cap a natively-growing population, since that means government controlling reproduction (à la one-child policy).
There's a point where caping even natively growing population is actually the right move.
There's plenty of overpopulated shitholes (Mumbai, Dhaka, Cairo, Bangladesh, etc) where it would have been an absolute blessing if government was controlling reproduction or put a population cap in place.
If you think capping population is wrong, go visit Dhaka, I highly recommend it.
If you're still on the fence after visiting Dhaka, you're beyond saving.
Lol. Dude, sure the Swiss can vote however they want. But we all see you and can pass judgement on this thinly veiled anti-immigrant nonsense all day long. Respect it I will never.
Except that it is not EU conform. And won't hold up anyway. Everyone knows this.
Some politicians want to market themselves here.
> Then it's down to individual responsibility to observe the norms of one's society.
That's ok, but Switzerland decided to also partake in many EU regulations, including free movement. They can't cherry-pick individual parts. If they don't want special relations to the EU then that's also fine but the benefits will be gone as well. The UK found this out quite quickly too.
Looks like it’s 380 in the Swiss Plateau (you might be mixing up sq km and sq mi), which puts its at about ~70% of the population density of the Netherlands as a whole.
But Belgium does suck. I drove from Amsterdam to Paris in the early 2000s, and Belgium stuck out as being obviously worse (dirtier) than the other two.
It’s ludicrous to think that 10 million is the “maximum tolerable population” for Switzerland. This is a racist, isolationist move and an attempt to stir up hatred among the population.
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