Monday, June 1, 2015

Direct Democracy in Switzerland

Switzerland has 2000 communes each of which sets its own income tax rate...

"The small country of Switzerland has over 2,000 communes, each of which sets its own income tax rate. This creates huge competition between the different communes and gives the population the possibility to “vote with their feet”, i.e. move to a commune a couple of miles away should they be unhappy with the way things are run at their current place of residence.
In such a system politicians and bureaucrats will have to serve the people because otherwise they will lose the support of taxpayers and their funding! As always, competition is key and the only protection against totalitarianism. I am confident that the majority of the Swiss people understand the beauty of the Swiss form of government. This can for example be seen in the fact that even though various statist and lobbying groups have tried to push Switzerland into the EU several times, today around 70% of the Swiss still don’t want to join the EU!"