Dr. Econ. Emil Harsev, in front of Bulgarian segabg.com:
Every time we get stuck in a crisis, there is an even more serious crisis, stagnation, recession – call it what you will. There is a real war going on in Europe again, not a thousand kilometers away. Another war is in full swing, economic, we are a warring country in it. Each of us asks the eternal question: what now? The noise of programs, forecasts, demands, protests, ideas, which are more absurd and non-existent, does not stop. They say a change in the state budget; companies and households are forced to reschedule their budgets every day. That is why it seems important to me to take a look at the experience of the absolute crisis champion, Switzerland. This is a country for which war and all kinds of crises have been a craft and a livelihood for centuries. Even a cursory glance at the gross domestic product chart for the last two centuries shows that the confederation became rich in the years of world wars and crises. The explanation is not only the famous Swiss neutrality, it is one of the pillars of the national strategy, but not the only one. Let’s not forget that the Alps are the birthplace of the famous soldiers (German Söldner, from the Latin sal datum, “given salt”), professional soldiers who fought in the early Middle Ages, for which he paid (salt is one of the fixed exchange values of at that time, the emperors also paid their legions with salt, later in gold). For Swiss mercenaries, war is a livelihood. My grandfathers grazed sheep in the native Rhodopes and the Aegean, the Rhodope mechrs and thorn carpenters went abroad to build, and the Swiss sold blood for salt.
War is in their blood and they understand it like no other, without emotions and malice. And that is why the Swiss anti-crisis strategy is not written – on paper and there are spewing the same empty talk with which officials flood Europe and the world. We all know the sermons from the mainstream. And the Swiss doctrine is in the genome and in the soul, it is not a state program, but a personal work, part of the memory and spirit of the nation (the Swiss relies on himself and not on the state – he pays for it and tries to make it cheaper ). That is why it is difficult to explain, but it can be observed and described, and whoever succeeds can learn.
I was confronted with the Swiss economic worldview in the 1980s, when they twice rejected the five-day working week in a referendum and insisted on working six days out of seven. In a TV poll, passers-by were asked why. One replied, “Denn nur durch Arbeit kommen wir zum Zeld!” – “We only make money from work!”
This is the golden economic rule of the Swiss. Concise quintessence of labor theory of value (LVT by Adam Smith and David Ricardo, AWL by Karl Marx). Next is trade and redistribution, to make someone else work for you. We all have what we make together, there is no other source of value outside of work. Beyond work for the Swiss, there are other values that allow him to go unscathed through wars and crises, to win when others fail and go bankrupt. There is no mystery and magic, but extremely earthly things, very simple. My colleague and friend from Basel defended his dissertation, after 2-3 years he headed the corporate banking and got engaged to the daughter of the owner of the bank. Before the marriage he decided to buy a house and asked for a loan from the bank. But the credit committee refused the loan and asked the chief cashier to explain to him how to live on borrowed money.
In banks, the chief cashier is a mythical figure, an honorary traditional position for a respected authority, guardian of values not only in the treasury, but also in the principles of the bank. So the chief cashier told his colleague that in order to get a loan for a house, he had to do two things: increase the required amount with the necessary money to buy along with the house as many cows as the barn collects. And take the application to the next bank. Because the colleague wondered who needed to look for another bank, why buy cows, when his salary as a bank director is a sure guarantee, five times the national average, not counting the premiums.
This is called integrity, the chief cashier explained to him, it is not right for a bank to lend to its own directors. And a man who has money and no cows is insecure. A cow owner must quickly go home, feed them, milk them, milk them and clear the barn when he has finished working at the bank. Such a man does not get drunk in pubs, does not go to foreign women, does not dawn in bars, does not gamble. He learns to look at living beings, to be responsible for them, so he understands how difficult it is to create a real product, real value. So you have to buy cows to keep the bank calm, by giving you a million and up a loan, to buy your own house and yard under the blue sky and the white peaks of the Alps. And when hard times come, the Swiss just works harder. He watches more cows, thinks about what else he can make money from, saves, masters whatever he can, for example, knits sweaters. Or he goes abroad, pretends to be a soldier or a servant; therefore the word for porter in Russian is “shveitzar”, in German e Schweizer. There is no shameful job for the Swiss, he works honestly and hard, but he will make money and survive. In fact, Switzerland is a very poor country, for centuries it has been the poorest and most miserable in Europe. Nothing is born in the alpine rocks, and in order to survive, people have learned to live in a hostile environment of competition: to invent new products, to work as professional mercenaries, but they value their work. And don’t wait for it. Only the world wars in the twentieth century created favorable conditions for the success of the Swiss model. I know that for us, born in rich, fertile and fertile Bulgaria, it is really difficult both to have a true idea of what we have and how we waste, and to see the world through the eyes of people forced to fight and constantly compete for his life. But it’s worth it. Bulgaria can be “Switzerland in the Balkans”. Maybe. We have been far richer than the Swiss for millennia. It is normal (caeteris paribus) to be much richer, unless we are much stupider or lazy.
