Quote:
Originally Posted by Acajack
Surprised that no one has mentioned the impact of what one might call "blood money" on Switzerland. They've always looked the other way when money came from dictators and criminals, and also kept a lot of wealth that belonged to Jews killed by the Nazis.
"Neutrality" also wasn't always as courageous a position to take as one is often led to believe.
BTW I do love Switzerland but I don't have any illusions about them.
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Switzerland is weird. I might be reading this wrong, but it's almost as if an East Asian society with its collectivist, hermit mindset was grafted onto the West. But, unlike Korea or Japan, Switzerland is not a monolingual ethnostate, nor has it historically been a country with just one religious denomination.
I think the fact that they take blood money, maintain neutrality and don't care what other people think about them comes from a similar frame of mind to the Asian mentality. It's the dark side of the same kind of culture that would provide enough bunker beds to house their entire citizenry in the event of an apocalypse, conscript their population and give each household access to a semi-automatic rifle, or maintain leadership among a rotating council of seven without ever worrying about a strongman taking advantage.
All of this is to say that Switzerland is a very strange place that is impossible to emulate. Like I said, we can learn certain things from them in isolation, but we can't "be more like Switzerland" by lowering our corporate taxes or having a conscripted army any more than you or I could "be more like LeBron" by shooting hoops outside our garage for 10,000 hours.