[fensipens]

Swiss people, who have all law-making authority here

Law making is done by the two chambers of parliament, National- and Ständerat. General constitutional amendments as well as particular laws can make their way to the electorate but that does not happen automatically.

Edit: If by "introducing his or her idea to the public voting" you mean constitutional amendments.. they require 100k signatures, not 20k. Why don't you look these things up, patriot?

    > because Swiss people have basic understanding..
    > Many journalists don't understand how Swiss political system works..
    > this otherwise excellent system..

Right.. swiss people are so smart. Like that one time where they didn't have any problems with institutional child-slavery for decades.. and the other time where they started to trample on rights of religious minorities.. I could go on.

[thwd]

Even though you're right that most laws are passed by the chambers, the people still have the power to put them up for voting (or put a second law up for voting that invalidates the first) by just gathering a couple of thousand signatures. In that sense the people really do have the final word in legislative matters.

Obviously swiss people are not born smarter than the rest of the world, but the education standard is quite okay and even though populism exists (as everywhere), Switzerland is doing better than any of it's neighbors right now, thanks to the decisions that the people have made.

The child-slavery thing is a black stain in our history, and we're aware. You can stop throwing rocks down from your glass house now.

[andresmanz]

Well, direct democracy isn't much good when the majority of people aren't able to think for themselves. Or think at all. Being Swiss myself, I sometimes get that impression at least.

[stefantalpalaru]

For those wondering about the child slavery part: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-29765623