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> a certain amount of trust in the system Switzerland operates on trust. You go to the car service, you get the work done, you leave, you'll receive a bill in
by ddalex 4y ago
> a certain amount of trust in the system
Switzerland operates on trust. You go to the car service, you get the work done, you leave, you'll receive a bill in the mail later. There is trust that they do the right work and not overcharge you, and there is trust that you'll pay.
- david927 4y agoWhen I was living there, I was told that you could go to a rug store, see a beautiful say, Persian Carpet worth thousands, and they would say, take it home and try it out. If you liked it, you came back to pay. They didn't take your information, just your name. I didn't try it but I believed it. Switzerland was very much that way.
- iwangulenko 4y agoLove this and it is true that trust is higher here, also lots of (high value) things are sold on tutti (ebay / fb marketplace of Switzerland), yet the country becomes increasingly a "normal" European country and trust decreases, also regarding salaries, self promotional plug: https://twitter.com/iwangulenko/status/1618865433108688896 https://twitter.com/iwangulenko/status/1618865433108688896
- dguest 4y agoGo to an unoccupied mountain hut, drink the beer, eat the food, use the wood for the stove, use the med kit (better to leave the morphine...), sleep in the beds, take some of the local cheese, and then leave your payment in the cookie tin, using the other few hundred CHF already there to make change. Just be sure to mark everything in the ledger, so the hut warden can replace it easier.
- nerpderp82 4y agoIn NZ and Australia I really enjoyed the farmers selling items along the road in little boxes. Carrots, fruit, etc. All on the honor system.
- Semaphor 4y agoThat’s also a thing in rural Germany.
- saenns 4y agoit's also a thing in Santa Cruz, CA
- californical 4y agoYup also common in the Midwestern US
- hcrean 4y agoAlso a thing in parts of rural England. I have a walking route that takes me via ~12 of these stalls because they are the ones that sell local Honey. All are money-in-the-tin operations.
- shard 4y agoAmazingly enough this can happen in the US as well. About 15 years ago I went to a sleepy little town in Northern California (might have been near Novato), where there was a used bookstore with nobody working. You pay what you think the book is worth, and just put your money in the tin by the door. Wonder if that bookstore is still around.
- dd36 4y agoThat’s how grocery stores work now.
- saiya-jin 4y agoWe have one such local produce shop in our village in western Switzerland. Nobody around, there is scale, you can pay digitally by Twint (or leave cash). Tons of farms around have ie chicken eggs or wine grapes or other products with (weather-proof) tin box (or QR code sticker for Twint) and scale for weighting, nobody around and you just go and take what you want. Then I go home to eastern Europe (we call it central Europe back home, lol nobody wants to be branded as east European since it reeks of russian association which for a long time means something very negative) and kleptocracy is visible literally everywhere on all levels of society, its nauseating beyond any tolerance from me... Its impossible for me to accept it once I've experienced much better society. One of the reasons to never move back and not raise kids back there, even if whole family is far (which is not always a bad thing).
- ClumsyPilot 4y agoimpressive. Especially the morphene
- ryanwaggoner 4y agoI’d really like to experience this. Is this something I could do on a week-long hiking trip? Where can I get more info?
- orbital-decay 4y agoThis is not unique to Switzerland, it's pretty common for remote areas across the continent from Scandinavia to Kamchatka. I've been hiking in the Baikal taiga, and it's pretty common for local hunters and travelers to leave money if you can't refill the hut with supplies.
- aliqot 4y agoIs this a thing? People do that?
- lolc 4y agoSure, many cabins operate on a honor code. People hiking in this harsh environment respect the hospitality. If you don't have that kind of respect around the mountains, you won't fathom going there anyway. And yeah, it's a high-trust society. In some farms you'll find a fridge where you can get local produce and leave your payment in the box. Especially so in the mountains where they make their own cheese. You'll find me lugging a nice cut of cheese back home from a Sunday hike. That box will be locked though, because there's more people passing than at a remote cabin :-)
- Schroedingersat 4y agoIn reasonably prosperous societies that take care of all their members and lack the cult of individualism, this is quite normal. Visible inequality, corruption, systemic persecution, and dire poverty tend to erode trust.
- brainwad 4y agoPerhaps... But Switzerland is one of the most atomised, individualistic societies I've lived in. Swiss social trust mostly comes from an abundance of means, as far as I can tell. When you've got a full belly and a roof over your head, crime just isn't as attractive.
- IG_Semmelweiss 4y agoIts part of culture. The state is not centralized (canton over federal), which makes each state independent and highly individualistic. This ethos percolates down, well beyond empowering the minority via direct democracy: its shameful on the individual to not carry one's weight. The smallest unit is the one to trust. Contrast that to other collectivist societies, with top heavy bureaucracies, where the top literally cannot carry their weight (debt/deficits) and the populace is always looking for the biggest bureaucracy to rescue them. There's no trust in people, because people are competing to weaponize the large state to screw... you.
- moonchrome 4y agoConsidering how many of my Balkan countrymen moved there I doubt this works.
- lwkl 4y agoSwitzerland is pretty effective at assimilating second generation migrants thanks to the dual education system. The kids of your countrymen are probably all in middle class jobs and raising a family.
- aix1 4y agoCould you expand on the education system and how it helps assimilate second-generation migrants? Thanks.
- saiya-jin 4y agoI've experienced this even in French mountain huts, during winter there is no guardian and usually only part of the hut is available for whoever comes. Use fuel, any other material, leave some money behind. Everybody chipped in. Pretty good to keep them running long term, it ain't easy or well paid job.
- bauruine 4y agoThey are only reachable by multiple hours hiking high up in the mountains. That's a lot of "work" just for the chance of a few hundred CHF.
- moonchrome 4y agoThis is true - hikers are usually self selecting that way. But the sentiment doesn't hold in general I'd say.
- tbalsam 4y agoBackpacker territory has a certain kind of trust. Being that close to nature long enough does things to a person. It's outside of something easily described with any human words.
- dguest 4y agoThe best part is that the penalty for not paying is just a bigger bill from the same garage.
- kuboble 4y ago> absolutely that! Coming from a country with very low trust both ways I was surprised that the swiss car mechanic (big chain from vw) didn't allow me to pay at the shop and didn't even tell me how much it will be because he'll calculate it later. Also the fact that most online businesses allow late payment via invoice shipped with the goods feels crazy.