Proton CEO Andy Yen gave a surprisingly sharp interview to the Swiss magazine “watson” (source in German: https://www.watson.ch/digital/wirtschaft/517198902-proton-schweiz-chef-andy-yen-zum-ausbau-der-staatlichen-ueberwachung). He warned that Proton might leave Switzerland if new surveillance laws are passed, which aligns with the company’s strong pro-privacy stance. So far, nothing unexpected.
However, Yen’s remarks about Swiss officials - describing them as lifelong bureaucrats, all lazy, and incompetent - came across as arrogant and out of place, almost like something you’d expect from a capitalism praising Trump supporter. he also was quoted in the interview, that the US works better (so they consider to move there?).
The interview left me speechless, and I’m certain I won’t be considering Proton for any of my future projects
I don’t see anything wrong here, calling bureaucrats lazy has absolutely nothing to do with Trump. I call then all the time lazy and useless in my country.
In the US at least, federal employees are non-political employees who have protections against getting randomly fired, so a new politician can’t replace the entire workforce with loyal idealogues. Federal employees earn less income than workers in the private sector, but do it for the sense of purpose and the stability.
Insulting bureaucrats as “lazy” on the whole is the first step to removing those protections, and going back to the world of Andrew Jackson and the robber barons, before these rules existed. Where the regulators can be fired for any reason and replaced with staff that are friendly to business, or not replaced at all. This led to huge wealth disparities, deregulation, a global depression, and the wealthy mostly remained unarmed.
So while calling government workers “lazy bureaucrats” seems harmless, in the USA at least it is part of an influence campaign to dismantle and despoil the government.
This has nothing to do with the US. It’s an interview in the Swiss media, of a Swiss-based company.
I think you are stretching they have protection here too that does not mean we can not criticize for bad work. How is calling them lazy a step removing those protection? People should call out those abuse their position being able to do so is good and democratic. Only by calling out the problems of a system that system can be improved, staying silent and ignoring the issues is problematic not calling them out. That does not mean everyone should be fired for any reason, it mean there is room for improvement.
I’m just saying, people have been claiming our warnings are “stretches” for the past 10 years here in the US, and look where we are now
Edit: if you want to criticize bureaucracy, be specific. Don’t just slander bureaucracy as a whole because they’re lazy or something. It breeds anti-intellectualism
You are warning about the wrong thing though being able to criticize the government or federal employees is a fundamental right of democracy.
But they are lazy at least in Europe they are it is very specific they are lazy and do not want to work, not all of the but many.
Voting trump into power so he can gut your administration is also a fundamental right of democracy, I’m just saying he careful with that type of rhetoric
That is something totally different. Seriously I do not understand the problem. You should worry about the opposite, not being able to expression your opinion that leads to dictatorship. Being able to call them out for being lazy should not be something people should be afraid of.
Trump has been going after the deep state and saying drain the swamp since 2015 or so. Really this just means eliminate the bureaucracy and replace it with loyalists and corporatists. Step 1 to that process is sowing doubt on the bureaucracy. I’m not saying that it should be illegal to criticize bureaucrats.
But that has nothing do with the comment Andy Yen made. The reason he probably he made this comment is because he frustrated with bureaucracy like many other people daily are. We need to be able to separate valid criticism from the madness that Trump is. Else this is going to turn into witch hunt where everyone who says or does something with minimal similarity to Trump is labeled a Trump loyalist.