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.