For better or for worse, they have a can-do spirit that New Jersey lacks:

The expected completion Friday of the 57-kilometer (35.4-mile) Gotthard Base rail tunnel is being hailed as an environmental triumph as much as an unprecedented engineering feat.

The $10 billion tube bores through the Gotthard massif, including the 8200-foot (2,500-meter) Piz Vatgira, along the route to Italy. It’s part of a larger project to shift the haulage of goods from roads to rails, spurred mainly by a concern that heavy trucks were destroying Switzerland’s pristine Alpine landscape.

Compared to New Jersey, where unless population growth simply ceases altogether people are going to need more routes into Manhattan, practical economic upside here seems relatively low (“it will only shave one hour off the time trains travel between northern Europe and Italy”) though I can’t speak to the aesthetic and ecological issues at stake.

If you’ve been following the US Postal Service’s various travails, you’ll be interested in Sasha Issenberg’s profile of Swiss Post in Issue 30 of Monocle. Unfortunately, it’s a subscriber-only piece, but this is a flavor of it:

Facing diminishing demand for its core service, Swiss Post has emerged as a model for state-owned utilities looking to remain relevant. It is reimagining itself as a global media and technology company, both competing and collaborating with some of Switzerland’s largest publishers, banks and tech start-ups. Swiss Post executives see themselves on unique turf at the intersection of data networks and the old-fashioned letter routes, with the ability to carve out an unrivalled position in the digital age. “We believe we are in the communication business, not just in the physical letter-mail business,” says executive vice president Frank Marthaler. “The internet is a fantastic place, and we want to work with the internet and not against the internet.”

Swiss Post was created in 1997, when the government split the postal and telecom functions from the country’s PTT utility. Nine years later, the Swiss parliament abolished the company’s parcel monopoly, and is now considering a bill that would do the same in the domestic letter business. Yet instead of fearing private-sector competition, Swiss Post is moving into new spheres.

Basically, Swiss Post was given additional flexibility about its business model and has been able to adapt to a changing landscape even while remaining a state-owned postal service. This seems to be basically what Postmaster General Potter is looking to do, but the Post reports that “As for Postal Service plans to sell banking, insurance and cellphone services through post offices, the consultants point to the agency’s lack of start-up funds and inability to afford potential short-term losses.” I’m not sure how Swiss Post got around this. What’s needed, presumably, is some way to access private capital markets without changing the USPS’ underlying ownership structure—some kind of joint venture model perhaps.

It’s worth emphasizing that though the downward trajectory for the USPS’s core business is real enough, the multi-billion dollar losses you see in the news are largely a result of an accounting rule related to prepayment of retiree health benefits. I didn’t realize this during the round of “USPS budget disaster” stories a few months ago, but it’s a key piece of context.

Europe is generally ahead of the United States with regard to high-quality public services, but the United States is generally far ahead of Europe in terms of tolerance for cultural differences. Thus you get things like the passage, via referendum, of an odious law banning the construction of minarets in Switzerland.

The referendum is the latest in a series of political wins by the Swiss People’s Party. Traditionally these right-wing populists had been the smallest of the four parties in Switzerland’s perpetual four-party coalition (along with the center-left Social Democrats, the center-right Christian Democrats, and the business oriented Free Democrats) but they’ve become the largest party in parliament and in various ways disrupted the cozy traditions governing Swiss politics.

They’re also pretty much a straightforwardly racist party, prone to doing things like promising “creating security” by kicking the black sheep out of the Swiss flock. So you get things like this minaret ban. And you have to wonder how many other European countries might follow suit if they had the kind of referendum-heavy system of government that you see in Switzerland.

I hope that my bona fides as a Max Baucus detractor are not seriously in doubt. And as a Max Baucus detractor, I certainly have my criticisms of the plan he put out. A plan that’s relatively stingy to working Americans would be more forgivable were it not also so friendly to industry. Deficit concerns would be easier to take seriously if not for Baucus’ willingness to cast such worries aside in order to pass conservative bills in the past. It’s not a flawless piece of legislation and its flaws aren’t in there for good reason.

That said, I think a lot of the blog response to this proposal is overblown. There’s just no reason to think that the system envisioned by Baucus would be either a political or a substantive disaster. Instead, it would create something comparable to the situation that currently prevails in Switzerland or Massachusetts. Is that great? No, it’s not. Health care in Massachusetts is substantial worse than health care in any number of foreign countries. That said, the Massachusetts health care system is better than the health care system that exists in any other American state. Similarly, if it were up to me Switzerland is about the last country I would choose to emulate. In terms of excessive costs—spending that lines the pockets of medical providers with little real medical benefit—it’s worse that everyone except . . . the United States of America.

And there’s the rub. The status quo in the United States is really bad. Baucus’ plan would make it better. There are people right now who could use health insurance, but they’re too poor. Baucus would make many of them eligible for Medicaid and more of them eligible for subsidies to let them afford private insurance. Hopefully something better than this plan can be worked out between the merger of the Finance bill and the HELP bill and the conference committee and all the rest. But even in its meager Baucusish form, the health reform currently on the table would be the biggest piece of progressive social policy in decades.

Geneva, Switzerland (my photo available under cc license)

As Paul Krugman says in today’s column, if you actually want to analogize Barack Obama’s health care plans to something the best country to look at is probably Switzerland which has a pretty similar system. There’s no crazy socialism there, nothing horrible happens. One should say that by the same token from my point of view there’s nothing particularly great about the Swiss system. It’s basically like American health care if you patched up some of the very worst aspects.

This is the sad reality that’s gotten neglected in the sturm und drang of the health debate. What’s being proposed is really quite moderate. You could imagine a world of go-for-broke reform in which you ran the risk of something terrible happening in order to achieve the possibility of something great happening. But that’s not what’s on the table. Instead, we’re looking at some tweaks with real-but-modest upside and no real downside. And yet to listen to cable news you’d think it was the end of the world.

Reader E.R. pointed me to a helpful Joe Matthews op-ed in the Sacramento Bee that attempts to explain why direct democracy works better in Switzerland than in California:

Under initiative-based direct democracy, California politics has become a shooting range that never closes. Dozens of initiatives are filed each year (the record is 152 in 2005). Since Johnson’s time, more than 105 initiatives have been approved by voters. In contrast, the referendum – a ballot measure that allows citizens to reverse an act of the Legislature – is rare. According to the Secretary of State’s Office, only 64 referenda have even been filed in California since 1911.

Why the disparity? The state constitution makes initiatives easier to qualify for the ballot than referenda (the number of signatures required is the same, but sponsors get more time to gather signatures for an initiative) and just as easy to pass at the ballot. A simple majority is all that’s needed.

Swiss direct democracy works in the opposite way. It’s based not on the initiative but on the referendum. The Swiss constitution makes initiatives twice as hard to qualify as a referendum. A referendum needs only a simple majority of votes to pass, but an initiative must achieve a “double majority” to succeed – a majority of the national vote, and majorities in a majority of the country’s 26 cantons, or provinces. Initiatives are thus much less common than referenda because they so often fail – the success rate of Swiss initiatives is just 9 percent. (In California this decade, a historically difficult time for passing initiatives, voters have approved 30 percent of initiatives).

I’d want to see more research before definitively accepting this theory, but it makes sense. And it goes to show that differences in institutional structure can make a very big difference.

Stadttheater, Berne, Switzerland (my photo, available under cc license)

With Brad DeLong’s caveats I agree with him that Christopher Caldwell’s FT article on the fiscal fiasco in California is quite good. But I do have one additional doubt. Brad wasn’t happy about “a pointless and unfair slam at Venezuela.” The slam in question was Caldwell’s “The state’s laws are shaped by plebiscites to a degree unmatched outside of Venezuela.”

That’s not, however, just pointless. It’s actually wrong. California’s laws are shaped by plebiscites to a degree unmatched outside of Switzerland. And yet Switzerland is about as well-governed as anyplace else you care to name. It seems to me that that is what critics of California-style direct democracy need to grapple with. Swiss political institutions are different from California in a whole bunch of ways. But they both rely heavily on plebiscites. And the results are quite different.

I contended back in June in response to a question on le bac that it is, in fact, absurd to desire the impossible. John Holbo struck back citing the Nescafe ad reproduced here, which he says “crosses over into Kierkegaardian territory.”

It is absurd to expect to get more from something than you think it is possible to get from anything. Especially if it’s instant coffee.

Still, I don’t think it is absurd to want coffee that would be better than life itself could possibly be. That would be a damn fine cup of coffee.

I think this is exactly backwards. It’s perhaps misguided to have unrealistic expectations about your instant coffee. But it’s not absurd to want an instant coffee that far exceeds the performance of any real-world instant coffee. And, indeed, with its Nespresso line I would say that the Nestle corporation has in fact succeeded in far exceeding my instant coffee expectations, albeit at a price that’s higher than I’m willing to pay. But to want more than “the most” is absurd. It’s on a par with wishing that you could put your coffee in a mug shaped like a square circle.

The larger story here is simply that Nescafe ad copy is often absurd. For example, when I visited Nestle HQ outside Geneva on my junket to Switzerland they had this in their office:

And also this puzzling statement of overall corporate philosophy:

Ever since I saw that last one, “creating magical enjoyment you feel good about” has been my informal mission statement here on the blog.

Normally, a big international conference achieves nothing at all. So it’s really quite extraordinary that the G-20 meeting appears to have produced several significant achievements. One of them, as Mark Kleiman points out, is the success of France and Germany in pushing an agreement on tax havens:

I have no idea whether there’s any meaning behind the pronouncement from the G-20 summit that the era of banking secrecy and tax havens is over. But if there is, that’s extraordinarily big, and extraordinarily good, news. The ease with which the wealthy can evade taxes on unearned income as long as Switzerland and the Caymans and Macao are there to help puts a limit on the extent to which redistribution via taxation is feasible.

Back in November I was the beneficiary of a very generous junket to Switzerland during which time I was able to more fully familiarize myself with this issue. And while I’m pretty sure I was supposed to come away more sympathetic to the Swiss position, and am even willing to consider reversing my position on this in exchange for more business class plane tickets and another week at the Mandarin Oriental in Geneva, the Swiss position is totally wrong. I mean, it makes great sense for Switzerland. But there’s no good reason for the rest of the world to put up with it.

As for how consequential the announcement it, my understanding is that a fair amount of this could pretty easily be curbed purely through EU action unless some outside power were to lean on the EU on behalf of the tax havens, so that even if the other major powers are only nominally on board Switzerland’s party may be over. The tax havens that aren’t Switzerland or Luxembourg are in better shape even in the wake of this announcement, but I believe the Obama administration is also serious about this issue which will spell trouble for Western Hemisphere havens. The main dispute between Obama and Sarkozy/Merkel was that the Americans were taking the accurate view that this really has nothing to do with resolving the economic crisis, whereas France and Germany seemed a little bit oddly fixated on it.

But either way, a crackdown would be a good thing. And it’s worth observing that even though there are valid criticisms to be made of the policies Obama has pursued domestically, as well as equally valid—though different—problems with the policies of the major European governments, the overall caliber of the global policy response has been pretty good. Most countries are mostly doing the right thing. Cooperation is falling short of what one would want, but there’s a definite trend toward net cooperation rather than “beggar thy neighbor” stuff. The less cuddly global powers such as China, Russia, and Saudi Arabia are all working constructively. And the key western leaders—Obama, Merkel, Sarkozy, and Brown—are doing a good job of focusing on areas of overlapping potential agreement rather than posturing over disagreements.

I know people on the right who are aware that climate change is real and problematic, but who somehow don’t really feel that engaging with the denialists on their side and trying to educate people is an important thing to do. It seems like an odd point of view to me. Meanwhile, in the alps:

Melting glaciers in the Alps may prompt Italy and Switzerland to redraw their borders near the Matterhorn, according to parliamentary draft legislation being readied in Rome [...] “This draft law is born out the necessity to revise and verify the frontiers given the changes in climate and atmosphere,” Narducci said. “The 1941 convention between Italy and Switzerland established as criteria [for border revisions] the ridge [crest] of the glaciers. Following the withdrawal of the glaciers in the Alps, a new criterion has been proposed so that the new border coincides with the rock.” [...] Narducci said the same negotiation will be proposed to France and Austria.

Fortunately, boundary adjustments between Western European countries are almost certain to be handled in an amicably bureaucratic manner rather than a violent one thanks to the success in turning international relations within Europe into a rule-governed enterprise. The rest of the world, however, doesn’t have these kind of luxuries and as de-glaciation unsettles established patterns of land- and water-use we’re going to see some very serious political problems.