Re: Why Switzerland succeeds

On Fri, 31 Jul 2026 16:08:01 -0400, Wilson <[email protected]>
wrote:

>
>Switzerland has 26 cantons, each with its own constitution, tax rates, 
>and laws, and the result is one of the wealthiest, most stable countries 
>on earth. That is not a coincidence.

Let them try it with us politicians.

>You want to understand why Swiss GDP per capita sits around $92,000 
>while the EU average hovers near $37,000? Start here. Cantons compete 
>for residents and businesses the same way firms compete for customers. 
>Zug kept its corporate tax rate at roughly 11.9%, attracted commodity 
>traders and crypto firms, and watched its population and tax revenues 
>grow. Cantons that taxed aggressively lost mobile capital and productive 
>citizens to neighbors with lighter burdens. This is Tiebout competition 
>working in real life, not a textbook diagram.
>
>The federal government in Bern handles defense, monetary policy, and 
>some foreign affairs. Everything else defaults downward. Cantons set 
>income taxes. Communes set property levies. Citizens in Appenzell 
>Innerrhoden voted on local laws by a show of hands in the Landsgemeinde, 
>an open-air assembly, until 1990 for most matters. The feedback loop 
>between decision-makers and the people paying for those decisions stays 
>tight. That tightness disciplines spending in ways no central auditor 
>ever will.
>
>Free market thinkers have stressed this for generations: political units 
>must be small enough that exit is credible. When the cost of leaving a 
>bad jurisdiction drops, politicians face real consequences for bad 
>policy. Switzerland kept that cost low by design. A business or family 
>in Basel-Stadt dissatisfied with cantonal policy drives forty minutes to 
>Baselland. No visa. No language barrier. No bureaucratic labyrinth. Just 
>a move.
>
>The EU spent decades building the opposite architecture, consolidating 
>regulatory power in Brussels and eliminating the jurisdictional 
>diversity that forces governments to stay honest. Switzerland refused to 
>join. Its per-capita wealth, its low public debt, and its functional 
>civil society arrived because the Swiss preserved the one institutional 
>feature every centralized state destroys first: the credible right to leave.
>
>https://x.com/Handre/status/2083122999721353311?s=20
-- 
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or I'll tie you to a railroad track and
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