> This means, big project ambitions get cut down to size, and few grand things if any, get done at the federal level. But this is glorious: it is very hard for regulations to become calcified within the state apparatus.

And yet, Switzerland's nationalised train network is one of the most extensive and effective in the world.

How did that happen?

I will bite, although this moves away from the news that Switzerland votes against the electronic ID system.

> How did that happen?

Two hypothesis:

a) The railroad net in Switzerland is fairly small when compared to Germany.

b) The numbers in the punctuality statistics are skewed. For example, once a train from Germany is late and wants to cross the border to Switzerland (e.g. Freiburg-Basel crossing), it is put on hold and has to wait until it falls into the next swiss train slot, entering Switzerland "on time". In Germany, this would be counted as a delay.

Source: Lived in Switzerland for a while.

The rail network was mostly built by private enterprise prior to 1898 when it was nationalised and has been run in a pretty conservative way since.

>While European rail operators such as French SNCF and Spanish Renfe have emphasised the building of high-speed rail, SBB has invested in the reliability and quality of service of its conventional rail network.

As a Brit I'd probably prefer that to £100bn on HS2 and god knows what on the proposed Boris Burrow.

This reminds me of how elephants don't suffer from cancer, because of their size their tumors get tumors and die off before doing damage to the animal. The best bureaucracy is not an efficient one, but one so inefficient that it can't do harm.

One important thing that was not argued well in my opinion is that the Swiss National Bank pegged its Swiss franc to the euro on Sept. 6, 2011. I lost a lot of money on that day, because I had all my net worth in CHF, as I trusted it to keep its value and not be devalued fast.

The good thing that came out from it is that I realized that even Switzerland's central bank cannot be trusted, and moved to Bitcoin. I never looked back.

The tiny swiss were the last to delink its currency to gold. They tried really hard, under enormous pressure, but finally relented in 2000 with the new constitution, where the delink was tied to a bunch of other constitutional directives..

So in summary - The country can only do so much before the big guns aimed at it take their pound of flesh.

I am not sure the central bank is faultless in the example you cite, however, appreciate that we live in a world where other powerful people are not interested in the well being of swiss banking customers.

I understand the pressure that Switzerland was in, and I don’t really care as I got back the money I lost on that day by many times.

At the same time I was used to the trains and trams being precise by the second in Zurich (I loved taking the train to work every day), and everything being predictable, that’s why it was a wake-up call for me.

The central bank's priority is probably stability and the well being of Swiss people using SFR for wages and mortgages rather than maximising the profits of currency speculators. If you want the latter then indeed bitcoin is no doubt a better match.

I too still dont really understand why they did that. I mean sure i get it, but it seems so counter intuitive especially now where we can expect the usd and eur to devalue even more

>So, while spain sends soldiers to die in Afghanistan, or the UK wastes decades of development on a grand EU project, or US citizens get spied on by their own govt via Patriot Act.... CH is just sitting pretty, doing its thing. Arguing about every little detail to exhaustion.

Switzerland can afford to do this because it's surrounded by countries that protect it from the real world. It doesn't have a real foreign policy because it doesn't have to.

>The best thing that could happen to us, is to remain just as we are. I welcome the next 800 years of peace and economic development.

That's not up to you. As I've said earlier, you're lucky to be surrounded by countries with bigger fish to fry as long as Switzerland toes the line.

I am not sure what dangers you imply here.

America to the West, Africa to the South, Russia and China to the East. Constant tensions at the borders of Europe. To me the neighborhood looks incredibly dangerous and increasingly so. On that subject, the lackadaisical attitude of some EU nations towards defense is bewildering (looking at you Germany).

USA is basically surrounded by large oceans and they still spend by far the most on defence.

The US's military expansion (and by extension its defense budget) is directly correlated to its domestic industrial expansion and its need to keep supply lines flowing. They basically spend a lot because they need to jump over two oceans to afford the economic model they chose. That wasn't the case when the US was still content with self-isolation, before the Spanish–American War.

Switzerland used to be surrounded by Nazi Germany on pretty much all sides.

They remain independent because they are a mountainous country that set its defenses up cleverly so that any invasion would be a pyrrhic victory at best.

Most of the population lives in the flatter parts of Switzerland, which are of no real concern for invasions from the West and North. The linguistic border runs inside Switzerland because the geographic border does as well.

That is a myth. These defenses you talk about were built partly with cheap material and therefore significantly less effective. This caused a major post-war corruption scandal.

Nazi Germany did not invade Switzerland, because Switzerland was actually more useful as a neutral state for Nazi Germany to exchange gold for commodities, for spying and Switzerland produced militiary equipment for Nazi Germany anyway.

Switzerland has also had a policy of armed neutrality since 1815 or before I think and the armed bit would probably be a headache for anyone invading.

The Nazis did plan an invasion. See Operation Tannenbaum[0].

Switzerland didn't end up getting divided between Germany and Italy thanks to the Red Army hurtling more humans west than the Wehrmacht could supply bullets east. Swiss munitions production wouldn't be risked.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Tannenbaum

There's this joke in Switzerland: When the war wasn't going so well Hitler sent a note to the Swiss government demanding a supply of tanks. The Swiss council deliberated and responded in due time: "Will one be enough or do you need all six?"