There are three main ways governments can change behaviours:

- Tax the behaviour they want to discourage. - Subsidise a behaviour they want to encourage. - Outlaw a behaviour they want to discourage.

It looks like all three were attempted based on the article.

> A proposal to outlaw artificial pesticides, and another to improve drinking water by giving subsidies only to farmers who eschew chemicals were both voted down by 61%.

> There are a lot of politicians presenting the false choice of wealth redistribution or climate change apathy.

Someone is going to suffer with any climate change measure, or else the measure would not be necessary. The only question is how that burden should be spread out, so it's not really a false dichotomy...

And yes, this can be a problem attributed to direct democracy: a majority of people in Switzerland can agree that some measure should be introduced, without being able to obtain a majority for any specific measure. With direct democracy that means that no measure will be introduced.

Artificial pesticides is the naturalistic fallacy rearing its ugly head.

Some of the pesticides which are allowed in organic farming are quite pernicious. It stands to reason that the opposite is true, and some of the pesticides used by conventional farming are less of an insult to ecosystems and human health than the 'natural' ones.

Banning 'artificial' pesticides, in other words, is a blunt instrument, one which stands a good chance of not accomplishing the actual goal toward which the legislation is intended.

The idea that some of "a"is bad means that some of "b" must be good is illogical.

Taxing behavior that you want to discourage is an oxymoron or at least it creates a perversive incentive in which the government taxes something but doesn’t invest and even sometimes hampers alternatives because it values the tax income.

Subsidies aren’t much better either in many cases…

We see this with EVs now where countries and jurisdictions are looking for ways to make up for the lost tax revenue due to ever and ever increasing EV sales.

The BBC article says that the laws were drafted to try and codify Switzerland's approach to the Paris Agreement and a referendum was held to decide whether Switzerland would enact those laws.

I would interpret the result as the Swiss people rejected their government's latest stab at enacting Paris. At 51:49 that's a: "Good effort, have another go and get it right this time. Please."

> The Swiss rejected some taxes. I think this is an important distinction compared to "climate change measures". The (very slim) majority may feel that such taxes are not the best way to deal with climate change, and support other ideas instead.

Which is a very succinct description of why “direct democracy” (or overuse of referendums) is, simply put, not a good idea.

A vote on tax X versus tax Y? Fine. But voting yes or no on taxes? Next thing you’ll see a vote on an expense separate from the funding…

The Swiss seem to be doing remarkably well as a country, and also on the specific point concerning matter of "government expenses financed by taxes". According to Wikipedia's table [1], the Swiss have a better debt-to-GDP ratio than the UK, US, or most of the EU.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_public_de...

How is direct democracy worse than the non-direct one in this respect? By enabling the politicians to not hold to the promises that got them elected?

If they don’t, you vote them out. You don’t get rid of politicians even with direct democracy.

Politicians faced with inconsistent referendum results (not budget neutral) aren’t even able to deliver. If people got a chance to vote for lower taxes and increased government spending, they would. But who will deliver? A party that promises both those things would be considered crazy/populist (hopefully) and lose the election.

You vote them out once in a while maybe if the herd does not forget being fooled. And their place is taken by the same sort.

And why do you think the same people would vote differently for some crazy idea directly or via the party promoting that same thing?

> You vote them out once in a while maybe if the herd does not forget being fooled. And their place is taken by the same sort.

Again, referendums doesn't magically make politics and politicians disappear. It's a rather terrible instrument for governingf.

> why do you think the same people would vote differently for some crazy idea directly or via the party promoting that same thing?

The crazy idea isn't "Tax X". The idea is that parties create budgets and the budgets must be balanced. That is: you might have one party saying "We'd add tax X and fund program Y" and another party saying "We don't want spending proram Y because we don't want to raise taxes".

The "crazy idea" isn't Tax X or program Y. The crazy idea would be to have the cake and eat it: to have the increased spending and not the increased tax. Now, you can of course solve this in referendums too. You can ask people "Do you want program Y, funded by Tax X" and people can say yes or no. The problem with this is, that it snowballs very quickly. Every expenditure ties into everything else because a state budget is extremely complex. A program might be a useless waste unless another program is also funded. And a tax might not cover an expense unless something else also happens (and so on and so forth). In the end, to get something that is possible (consistent) you would often get one big direct democracy vote: which budget do you want A or B or C? Which is fine! But who would create those options?

The least bad solution to that that i know of is: let people freely suggest these. Let them organize in groups and people can vote for their ideas as consistent sets of ideas such as "budgets".

We are not talking about eliminating politicians. You said the direct democracy is worse than some other, perhaps representative. I asked why and you keep repeating because it is bad. Sorry I just stop here.

The above message was the “why”: because it forces consistent (e.g budget neutral) ideas to be voted on.

Direct democracy doesn’t do that so isn’t viable for all decisions. Personally I think it’s useful in so few situations that it’s best left alone.

Okay. Now do Swiss voters on migrants, refugees, and participation in science programmes of the EU.

What you’ll find is that the Swiss are an insular myopic bunch.

Good for them. Ultimately they view their positions on these issues as best for the well being of their nation and its people. Who are you to say otherwise, should they pursue policies that go against their interests to satisfy foreigners? Why would they want refugees and migrants to come into their country? How would it benefit them?

> Who are you to say otherwise, should they pursue policies that go against their interests to satisfy foreigners?

One should be able to criticize policies that directly affect them, for example those on climate change, whose effects go well beyond a country's borders.

When they're responsible for not even 0.1% of global emissions you're best served targeting the countries who are the most responsible.

Which is why finger pointing works so well towards achieving... nothing, ever. Unless you're able to set an example, calling for others to act is pointless. So the countries most responsible can sit and do nothing now because they will claim "not even the Swiss want a clean planet"

> should they pursue policies that go against their interests to satisfy foreigners?

To some extent I think it’s absolutely fair to expect that, yes. Especially in the richer countries of the world.

This is not how politics works. Nations are definitionally a group of people with shared interests. No one else is going to vote in the interest of the Swiss, only they will for themselves. It is absurd to equate well run, successful, wealthy nations with an obligation to harm themselves by adopting bad policies that hurt their own people. Anyone advocating for that should be ignored.

Regardless of your opinion, I don't think it is in the best interests of this forum to voice your disagreement with the Swiss voters by using a word like myopic.

I wish I could say the same for my home country.

I'm guessing by your tone that the Swiss voted in their interests rather than the interests of international bankers on all those items?

International bankers?

Nah, I think they're just saying no to any and all taxes.

The "we think there are better ways" spiel is just that, a spiel, meant to placate the international audience until people stop watching.

And then do nothing.

"The (very slim) majority may feel that such taxes are not the best way to deal with climate change, "

You have no way of knowing that.

It could be that they simply don't support fighting climate change, or deny that it exists, and could possibly want to claw back other related programs.

"the false choice of wealth redistribution or climate change apathy"

Actually that's a false proposition ... because Taxes are not Wealth Distribution.

If they were taxing to give to the poor, somehow in the name of 'climate change' then maybe. But taxing travel to reduce usage - or - to pay for offsets, or to use to invest in climate programs - that's not 'wealth redistribution'.

"There are other ways of looking at this, which I don't think are captured by framing it as them having rejected climate change measures. "

They voted squarely against measures which were designed to help meet the Paris Accord targets. While there is obviously more nuance to it, the editorial framing is close enough that it's fair.

It is what it is.