So why the beef in Berne? Easy! City busybodies, mostly socialists who think like Balzac did—that all great fortunes derive from great crimes—believe that foreign residents should pay higher taxes, totally ignoring the fact that we not only pay high Swiss federal taxes in the form of a forfait, as it’s called, but also local ones. A forfait is a deal struck between the Swiss and the foreigner. The Swiss tell you how much they think you should pay, you try and argue a bit, then a deal is struck. The city slickers want to break the agreement, hoping to out-Hollande that great French clown Hollande.

When I speak with the village people, their reaction to those who wish to change the system is not one I can accurately report in a family magazine. I have yet to find one local who fails to froth at the mouth when I mention Berne and its interference. Here we thought we were enjoying democracy at the village level, with peasants and artisans and innkeepers thinking they were masters of their own destinies, and suddenly Karl Marx emerges from the ashes and is about to ruin a nearly perfect little society.

I am among the few that reported the harm Bernie Ecclestone did when he bought the Hotel Olden—a very old and traditional local inn—and turned it into a boutique hotel for the rich and very ugly. The locals were priced out and some of us older hands made sure the dwarf knew it. (He just bought a second chalet for his rather unattractive daughters.) But that is neither here nor there. Gstaad would not exist in its present form without the foreigners. Everyone would be unemployed overnight and would have to move to the cities on welfare. It’s that simple.

Yet there are those who need a map to find Gstaad but know what’s better for the locals and were ready to come and demonstrate on their behalf. The fact that no one showed up proves the slimness of their argument: Better to be unemployed and on welfare than earning a very good living off foreigners. Go figure, as William Tell never said.