People volunteer to be the freier, allowing others to graciously have their way. The result is that Switzerland works and it is anything but a freier, as its wealth and stability indicate. The whole, it seems, is greater than the sum of its freiers. Israel is a different story altogether. Everyone tries to avoid being a sucker, yet it is a battle that even the best do not always win.
Someone is bound to move a little faster, or push a little harder.
People are so focused on coming out ahead of the other guy, that daily life is reduced to a chaotic collection of battles, with inevitable winners and losers. Though the average Israeli may not be a freier, his behavior results in a society that is collectively one of the biggest of all. For if everyone is above the law, then society's underpinnings are weakened, leading to communal fragmentation and national frailty. Indeed, it is the Swiss who do not yield their territory to foreigners, who stubbornly preserve their independence and sovereignty, and who do not hesitate to thumb their noses at the world when it suits them. Israel, the anti-freier, has repeatedly withdrawn from portions of its ancestral homeland, kowtowed to dictates from its allies, and refrained from defending its national interests for fear of how the world would react.