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Scale. San Bernardino County California is 1/3 larger than Switzerland. Just a county, not even a state. Online shopping among only Swiss websites is more or less among local retailers relative to the US. In the US, I can comparison shop using Google, eBay, Walmart, Amazon because if it is sitting in a warehouse 4000km away, the logistical chain is simple from a regulatory standpoint and there is established logistical infrastructure for its transportation, UPS, USPS, FedEx, and a large number of regional aggregators. There's no customs declaration, tariffs, etc. The only difference between New York and Texas is sales tax rate. At an abstract level like the community of nation states, Switzerland and Germany are arguably like the US. In physical reality, they are not transcontinental scale. |