The Law Against Social Parasites

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BRUTE
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Re: The Law Against Social Parasites

Post by BRUTE »

brute would also imagine that due to the army consisting of everyday citizens, it would be extremely hard to get the Swiss population involved in military adventures abroad. it would literally take sons and dads out of every home, not like in other countries where there's a separate "caste" of professional soldiers.

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Jean
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Re: The Law Against Social Parasites

Post by Jean »

I will complete and correct Jacob and Riggerjack a little.
Military service is 4 mounth if you stay a soldier, 9 if you are drafted to be a sub-officer, and one year if you are to become an officer (exact length might have changed since). You don't have to compete to stay in, but there are requirments.
When this is over, you get some of your equipment at home, including weapon (rifle for most, handgun for some), but no ammunition, which I found absurd. Hopefully, you can buy as much ammunitions as you want to, as long as you have nothing against it in your criminal record.
Then you are in an active battalion for repetetion courses(3 weeks each, once a year), you have to do 7 of them as a soldier or a NCO, more if your an officer dependig your rank.
When you're done with those, you are in the reserve until you are somewhere between 30 and 34 (up to 50 for officer), and then you have to give back you stuff. You can keep you riffle (worth abour 3000.-) for 100.- if you get a gun aquisition license in time, which is easy if you have no criminal record. During all this time, you have to go practice with your weapon once a year, if you fail, you pay a fine. There is a 300m shooting range in virtually every village. What Jacob said about Bunker is bellow reallity.

So nearly all of our army is militia, only instructors and a few elite companies are professionals.

Becoming an instructor is competive (altough there are different status, but I would say that all our instructors where qualified), Being in the few profesionnal troups is very competitive. I've been trough one process. We had to send a file with resume and letter and more, after this step, every one was smart and quite strong (except a few tourists). After the second row, every one was strong and very interesting to spend time with. At the end, they didn't took me in despite my excellent performances (I think I was among the best, even among the very few still in it, but I might be wrong), because they tought my personallity might be a problem for some people I'de had to work with. I'm still sour about it.

So to sum up, I would say that despite a reasonable budget, a huge fraction of the population is trained with weapons, but also, trained to work together in military units. We have a lot of infrastructure, and even today, Switzerland would be hard to invade.

Tanks are driven by militia, and milka is an austrian brand.

If I was in charge, I would focus on infantry, fortess and comunication, and completly give up tanks and planes because they eat money and oil.
i would focus infantry training even more on guerilla warfare and being comfortable living outside.

Riggerjack
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Re: The Law Against Social Parasites

Post by Riggerjack »

Well, they have a lot of reasons not to play in someone else's yard. Most notably, the politics of Switzerland is truly local. The Cantons(States or counties) control their own budgets, most spending is local. I've heard it said that most Swiss citizens couldn't name their President. Taleb described Switzerland as the land of petty squabbles. In that power was so decentralized that most was used for local building code enforcement.

We would probably be similar, if it weren't for Lincoln.

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Jean
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Re: The Law Against Social Parasites

Post by Jean »

I can't name our president, but I could name our 7 federal councilors.
Power is alwaya done at the lowest possible level.
It would be to long to detail everything.
But I wouldn't say that enforcing building code is the main activity of power.
But I heard that our modern (1848) constitution was modeled on the american one, so it could have been the same for you.

BRUTE
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Re: The Law Against Social Parasites

Post by BRUTE »

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President ... federation
The Swiss President is not – as are, for example, the Presidents in Austria or Germany – the head of state of the country: under the Swiss Federal Constitution, the Federal Council doubles as a collective head of state and head of government.
However, because the Swiss have no single head of state, the country also carries out no state visits. When traveling abroad, the President does so only in their capacity as head of their department.
Visiting heads of state are received by the seven members of the Federal Council together, rather than by the President of the Confederation. Treaties are signed on behalf of the full Council, with all Federal Council members signing letters of credence and other documents of the kind.
The President is elected by the Federal Assembly from the Federal Council for a term of one year.
wow. this is fascinating. how has brute not heard of this? the Swiss don't have a head of state. it's their state's council o_O looks like they just rotate the office of "President" among the 7 council members each year.

chocolate and now this? brute is loving Swissland more and more.

enigmaT120
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Re: The Law Against Social Parasites

Post by enigmaT120 »

What's the catch again? Valleys where the sun never shines? And having to become polylingual?
...did I spell that wrong?

Brute, they can't grow cocoa there. So if there are taxes on imported food, it is probably expensive there.

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Jean
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Re: The Law Against Social Parasites

Post by Jean »

Cheap chocolate is 6.- per kg, it's ok.
From 14.- per kg, you get good chocolate.
At 35.- per kg it can be excellent.
Then, you can pay as much as you want.
We have some valley with very little sun in winter, but you don't have to live there.
Basic staple aren't more expensive than anywhere else, but besides this and alcool, everything is. Restaurant are very expensive (I remember being in key west and thinking that it was as expensive as switzerland).


For anglo-saxons, the catch is that you will have to learn a lot to create a new social network for you. People will leave you alone and you might have to ask people if you want to do things with them. Then if you are annoying (most people that fail to get into our circles do so because they lie about themselves to make themselves more interesting), it will be difficult. Modesty is very valued. Respecting peoples privacy is too. People will seem cold because they respect your privacy. Famous people don't live here becauses of taxes (other places are cheaper), but because they can walk around without being disturbed all the time. People will not seek contact, they will assume that you have a life and don't want to be disturbed, unless you seek contact yourself (but if you look too comfortable, people will assume you already have enough friends and don't need them).
I would say that the culture is more similar to scandinavian countries than it is to france or germany. Maybe jacob can detail this?
And you're expected to learn the local language (french or italian, or the local german dialect).

As I already own real estate, I would benefit directly from more people coming there, but as I wish to buy more, I would like you to wait some more years.

BRUTE
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Re: The Law Against Social Parasites

Post by BRUTE »

that feel when they price their chocolate in kilograms..
even $35/kg is cheaper than quality chocolate is here. brute regularly pays $4+ for a bar (100g) of 90% Lindt.
he does not know how Lindt compares to "good" or "excellent" Swiss chocolate.

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Jean
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Re: The Law Against Social Parasites

Post by Jean »

I like Lindt, but you get better chocolate for this price in switzerland. We don't price it in kg, I do, because I used to compare every food for efficiency (gramm of nutrients per cent).

Solvent
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Re: The Law Against Social Parasites

Post by Solvent »

The chocolate is often sold in 100g blocks which makes extrapolation to price/kg pretty simple. By the way, in the French, a 'block' of chocolate is a 'tablette'. This explains a pun in Air France's safety video, if you happen to have flown with them recently. It amused me that my French comprehension was good enough for that, at least. I buy the stuff at 6 CHF/kg, mostly. The better stuff doesn't seem to justify the markup, in my opinion.

I think the food is generally expensive, but you might be surprised how much is still produced in Switzerland rather than imported.

Although I guess no-one except the military actually knows of their strategies for sure, I think it's generally accepted that in case of an invasion from the North or West that the Swiss would evacuate and abandon their cities on the Swiss plateau and essentially fight guerrilla warfare while fortifying bases in the alps. The population centres are not as impregnable as the common perception would suggest. I think the idea is that rather than making invasion impossible, the idea is to make invasion so costly that it would be unpopular.

It's amusing and frightening in equal measures that a number of Swiss, while doing their obligatory military service, forget they are carrying guns and leave them on trains every year.

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