Blog Roll: Switzerland

 

June 14, 2026 Switzerland Rejects Measure to Cap Its Population at 10 Million NY Times. The referendum was about limiting migration after the number of residents rose by more than a quarter since 2000, but it was framed around affordability and sustainability.

The video at the beginning of the Blog Roll explains why, even though the Population Cap referendum failed, it will keep coming up in the future and will probably pass at some point.

Here are some of my other posts on Switzerland:

• A Steady State Economy for Switzerland  It could happen if growth rates are reduced.
• How Does the Economy of Switzerland Work? CH has an Export Controlled Economy.
• Population Forecasts for Switzerland Steady State or Collapse?
• Stabilizing the Export Controller. the CH_LM model has one unstable feedback loop in the Export Controller (X-HOURS). Exports are limited by the increase in work hours necessary to produce the exports. Short-term labor immigration can lift the constraint but the Population Cap was essentially a backdoor attempt to limit immigration. The Export Controller Feedback loop has to be stabilized for Switzerland can become a Steady-State Economy.

You can run the CH_LM Model on my Google site (here). Discussions of data sources and how the state space models were constructed is in the Boiler Plate and in the Introduction to State Space Models.

Notes

Wikipedia Links

• Economy of Switzerland a highly developed free-market economy. The Swiss economy has ranked first in the world since 2015 on the Global Innovation Index and third in the 2020 Global Competitiveness Report. According to United Nations data for 2016, it is the third richest landlocked country in the world after Liechtenstein and Luxembourg.
• Politics of Switzerland a federal state with representative democracy. One unique element is direct-democracy voting on issues of importance. The Population Cap was one such direct-democracy measure.
• History of Switzerland the Swiss Confederation has been a federal republic of relatively autonomous cantons, some of which have a history of federation that goes back more than 700 years, putting them among the world's oldest surviving republics.
• Geography of Switzerland a mountainous landlocked country located in Western and Central Europe. 
• Demographics of Switzerland has 9 million inhabitants, as of June 2024. Its population quadrupled over the period 1800 to 1990 (average doubling time 95 years). Population growth was steepest in the period after World War II (1.4% per annum during 1950–1970, doubling time 50 years), it slowed during the 1970s and 1980s but has since increased to 1% during the 2000s (doubling time 70 years).
• Cartography of Switzerland Switzerland has had its current boundaries since 1815, but maps of the Old Swiss Confederacy were drawn since the 16th century. 

Blog Roll: Automating Government

 

From my perspective, the attempt to automate government started in serious after the 911 Terrorist Attack and the need to connect the dots between law enforcement and National Intelligence in the War on Terror.

Note: I've worked in TECH all my life and I find all this unsettling. I've also worked in Government most of my adult life and find Bureaucracy unsettling.

 

Notes

Stalcup, M. (2009) Connecting the Dots. Intelligence and Law Enforcement since 9/11

Gamerman, A. (2026) Elon Musk is Colonizing Earth.

Wikipedia Links

• 911 Terrorist Attack colloquially known as 9/11, were a coordinated series of suicide attacks perpetrated by the Islamic terrorist organization al-Qaeda against the United States in 2001. 
• War on Terror a global military campaign initiated by the United States in response to the September 11 attacks in 2001.
• DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) a second Trump administration initiative in the United States. Despite its name, it was not a federal executive department.
• Elon Musk a businessman and former public official known for his leadership of Tesla and SpaceX. 
• Business Process Automation the technology-enabled automation of business processes.

Process Automation

The front-end vision for government automation seems to be that every government function (paying taxes, getting a driver's license, getting a passport, voting, etc., etc.) could be done with a cell phone mobile app. Behind the front-end is the difficult problem of business process automation. The graphic above summarizes Elon Musk's five step process used at SpaceX and Tesla, basically break things quickly and simplify before automation.

Video

• Don’t Automate a Mess: Scaling AI and Automation in Government
• The Algorithm Elon Musk Will Use To Take Over The Government

Blog Roll: Steady-State Economies

 

For much of Modern History, a Steady-State Economy (see definition below and video above) is thought of as a system state that might or might not happen at some point in the future. The history of the concept is basically that Classical Economists thought (reasonably) that economies would eventually become stationary. Neoclassical Economists, starting in the 20th Century, assume that, as a practical matter, monetized economies can grow forever, given unlimited Technological change. In the Late 20th Century, Ecological Economists viewed the economy as embedded in a Finite Natural System creating a Limit to Economic Growth.

What is missing from this Theoretical History of of the World-System are economies that are in a demonstrable steady state. For that, we need models and Systems Theory provides general models that can be used for this purpose. Neoclassical Economic models confuses Economic Stagnation with a Steady-State Economy. Stagnation is a short-run condition while the steady-state is a long-run position of systems with certain characteristics, essentially system stability. Neoclassical economic models do not have enough feedback loops to create long-run stability.

This Blog Roll presents statistically estimated models of Steady-State Economic systems:

• A Steady-State Economy for Germany  The German economy has basically been in a steady state since 2010. Commentators keep mischaracterizing the steady state as growth stagnation.
• Western Europe: Growth and Collapse? Growth peaked sometime before 2016.
• A Steady-State Economy for Israel A stabilized model does not reach a steady state until 2150.
• A Steady State for Italy The economy has essentially been in a steady state since the turn of the Century.
• US Steady State or Collapse The US economy is predicted to reach a peak in 2060. Is this a threat to the World-System?
• World System Steady State and Collapse The World System is predicted to peak in 2060.
• IPCC Scenarios all predict growth and collapse.
• Portugal's Poor Performing Economy Actually heading for a steady state.
• Is the UK Economy Heading for a Steady State? Maybe and maybe not!

Notes

Wikipedia Links

• Steady-State Economy an economy made up of a constant stock of physical wealth (capital) and a constant population size. In effect, such an economy does not grow in the course of time.
• Classical Economists a school of thought in political economy that flourished, primarily in Britain, in the late 18th and early-to-mid 19th century. 
• Neoclassical Economists an approach to economics in which the production, consumption, and valuation (pricing) of goods and services are observed as driven by the supply and demand model.
• Ecological Economists a transdisciplinary and an interdisciplinary field of academic research addressing the interdependence and coevolution of human economies and natural ecosystems, both intertemporally and spatially.
• Finite Natural System all biotic and abiotic things occurring naturally, meaning in this case not artificial.
• Limits to Economic Growth the possibility of exponential economic and population growth with a finite supply of resources, studied by computer simulation.
• World-System a socioeconomic system, under systems theory, that encompasses part or all of the globe, detailing the aggregate structural result of the sum of the interactions between polities. 
• Systems Theory the transdisciplinary study of systems, i.e., cohesive groups of interrelated, interdependent components that can be natural or artificial.
• Economic Stagnation a prolonged period of slow economic growth, typically measured in GDP per capita growth or median income growth, which is usually accompanied by high unemployment. Under some definitions, slow means significantly slower than potential growth as estimated by macroeconomists, even though the growth rate may be nominally higher than in other countries not experiencing economic stagnation.
• System Stability the stability of solutions of differential equations and of trajectories of dynamical systems under small perturbations of initial conditions.