Who Moved my Swiss Cheese?
The day I flew from Shanghai to Zurich, my mother in law asks me over packing my suitcase, why Switzerland is so wealthy? I briefly contemplate and give her a quite substantial answer, which in hindsight loosely quotes from Niall Ferguson’s must read Civilization:
After traveling this week to Zurich and Basel two more reasons come to my mind:
While having breakfast in Kloster Dornach, where I spend a night to visit Rudolf Steiner’s Gotheaneum, a probably 50-year-old, heavy built German fellow strikes up a conversation. It turns out that he is a professional ambulance driver who works in Wallis, a Swiss region bordering Italy, but now looks for a job in the North of the country. I ask him, if there is a difference between driving an ambulance in Germany and Switzerland. He nods fervently and tells me that the most important difference is that Swiss treat him with respect. He is moreover entitled to perform more first aid than he is in Germany. I want to know why that is, and he tells me that the German insurance system covers every single ambulance case, whereas the Swiss must pay themselves something between 800 and 2000 Swiss Franc for being picked up and dropped off at a hospital. German’s therefore consider first aid workers as a free of charge service which they do not value properly. If a German had a few beers too much, his friends will call the ambulance instead of waiting until he is sober again. Swiss would never do that. The call an ambulance only in the case of emergence. Whereas Germany distributes the financial burden of FOC ambulance service to all insurance payer, the Swiss have to cover the expenses despite their national wealth themselves. The latter seems to be the right policy: it teaches self reliance and self discipline.
Whatever the Swiss have achieved on a national level in terms of wealth and living standards, both Zurich and Basel did despite their high foreigner ratio not feel like welcoming places. I saw too many people who were obviously engrossed with themselves. Here a snobbish dude riding an elevator and checking his polished fingernails, there a posh women dressed like a royal and tilting her nose and chin too much up into the air. The Swiss and their foreign residents seem to have grown accustomed of hiding away in their snug realm of protected riches, they radiate the air of arrogance and elitism and shut those out who have not made it into this exclusive circle.
The day I flew from Shanghai to Zurich, my mother in law asks me over packing my suitcase, why Switzerland is so wealthy? I briefly contemplate and give her a quite substantial answer, which in hindsight loosely quotes from Niall Ferguson’s must read Civilization:
- More than 500 years of Peace: The Swiss live probably in the most peaceful nation mankind can remember. They did not engage in war since they gained their independence from the Habsburgs in 1499 (and even ousted them from their originating castle located between Zurich and Basel) and thus were able to continuously build on the efforts of their ancestors. Peace, safety (and anonymity) were also the main draw for many foreigners to first transfer their wealth to Swiss banks and then move their themselves (Switzerland has the highest percentage of foreign born residents of all of Europe at 28%).
- Minerals and Metallurgy: Switzerland is by two thirds covered by the Alps and therefore shares with France, Italy, Germany, Austria and Slovenia the geographical and geological advantage of having access to ores (and abundant water supplies). These natural resources promoted the early development of metallurgic knowledge and lead eventually to accelerated industrial development, in particular in form of the automotive industry at the end of the 19th century.
- Social mobility and easy access to quality education: even though many Swiss nowadays bear an incredibly snobbish air there is considerable social mobility in a society which per definition did never have a nobility. My mother in law nodded and replied with a Chinese proverb: 龙生龙凤生凤老鼠的儿子挖空 | A dragon gives birth to a dragon, a phoenix gives birth to a phoenix, a rat’s child digs pits.
- Small is beautiful: Fritz E. Schumacher argued in favor for econmics as if people mattered and his teacher Leopold Kohr gave birth to the sociopolitical idea that nations need to broken down into small and thus governable units. Those who govern must be literally in touch with who are governed. Large entities whether enterprises or souvereign states create misery for the individuals within.
After traveling this week to Zurich and Basel two more reasons come to my mind:
- Rule by law: Max Weber differentiated between societies which are governed by law and such, which are ruled by personal relationships. It’s obvious that Switzerland and China face each other at the extremes of this spectrum.
- Direct Democracy: based on their original grass root movement of free peasants from the Cantons Schwyz, Uri and Unterwalden, who pledged in 1291 an allegiance against the regionally dominant Habsburgs, contemporary Swiss still live in one of the most direct democracies existing.
While having breakfast in Kloster Dornach, where I spend a night to visit Rudolf Steiner’s Gotheaneum, a probably 50-year-old, heavy built German fellow strikes up a conversation. It turns out that he is a professional ambulance driver who works in Wallis, a Swiss region bordering Italy, but now looks for a job in the North of the country. I ask him, if there is a difference between driving an ambulance in Germany and Switzerland. He nods fervently and tells me that the most important difference is that Swiss treat him with respect. He is moreover entitled to perform more first aid than he is in Germany. I want to know why that is, and he tells me that the German insurance system covers every single ambulance case, whereas the Swiss must pay themselves something between 800 and 2000 Swiss Franc for being picked up and dropped off at a hospital. German’s therefore consider first aid workers as a free of charge service which they do not value properly. If a German had a few beers too much, his friends will call the ambulance instead of waiting until he is sober again. Swiss would never do that. The call an ambulance only in the case of emergence. Whereas Germany distributes the financial burden of FOC ambulance service to all insurance payer, the Swiss have to cover the expenses despite their national wealth themselves. The latter seems to be the right policy: it teaches self reliance and self discipline.
Whatever the Swiss have achieved on a national level in terms of wealth and living standards, both Zurich and Basel did despite their high foreigner ratio not feel like welcoming places. I saw too many people who were obviously engrossed with themselves. Here a snobbish dude riding an elevator and checking his polished fingernails, there a posh women dressed like a royal and tilting her nose and chin too much up into the air. The Swiss and their foreign residents seem to have grown accustomed of hiding away in their snug realm of protected riches, they radiate the air of arrogance and elitism and shut those out who have not made it into this exclusive circle.