Considering the red wonderland painted here in the comments, the strong shift to the right of the rest of the country suddenly makes sense. We shouldn't forget that an alliance of ALL Austrian parties, including the consevatives, were barely able to defeat the right wing candidate.
The Austrian right is far more popular in the countryside than the cities - which is not a new thing, non-urban areas have historically been more right-leaning.
It's the same problem we continue to see in other countries - progressive cities and conservative regions.
That said, because progressives have been so successful in Austria, even the right wing is very socialist in some ways. It's just that they want all those benefits for Austrians only.
Interesting - can you elaborate on that?
"Red vienna" is a byproduct of that cultural climate prior to 1914. After World War 2 there might have been some isolated blurbs of Vienna's former greatness but even those are just the crumbs of what collectivism and anti-semitism started to grind down before Hitler undid it completely (and long lastingly) when he marched into his home country.
-- Orson Welles' monologue in The Third Man. Which was set in post-war Vienna.
Possibly Switzerland, but not by much.
Before Red Vienna was not huge free market period but a huge lost war, pervasive destruction and a dramatically shrunk country, cut off of his industry (Czech) and agriculture (Hungary).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercer_Quality_of_Living_Surve...
Asking for ROI of Vienna's infrastructure investments is as absurd as asking how much tax did a business get back from his investments.
Being a proponent of free markets I would love to see them as not just necessary and useful for some purposes but also as "ethically perfect".
But I can not.
Free markets, based exclusively on voluntary agreements, lack a crucial element to be fair: Equal opportunity.
Extreme inequality of wealth causes extreme inequality of opportunity. This is the core dilemma of free market liberalism.
There is no plausible definition of meritocracy that has a place for inherited wealth. Place of birth isn't very meritocratic either.
We will also have to account for the possibility that luck may play a much bigger role in success than we like to think.
If we want to keep the good parts of free markets and voluntary agreements, we will have to do better than declaring every form of redistribution of wealth to be coercion at gunpoint.
I never said we could have completely equal opportunity. But by implication, the outcomes of our voluntary agreements are never perfectly ethical or completely justified.
Redistribution of wealth makes up for the fact that the playing field is never completely level. Rejecting all social processes that lead to peaceful redistribution of wealth or to more equal opportunity is both unpragmatic and unethical.
Also, extreme inequality distorts markets massively. It's much more than just noise. Markets break down completely if too many participants are forced to sell or buy at any price just to survive.
Curious that you call unethical to voluntary agreements and simultaneously imply that peaceful redistribution of wealth is ethical when you can't do it without coercion which is exactly unethical. Explain how this peaceful redistribution of wealth is any good? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOjvJAfIMSI
In practice, all forms of state use coercion. Try resisting arrest by the police for a crime you are suspect but didn't commit.
There are much worse examples that polarize much more.
Empirically, when the state is dissolved, it is quickly replaced by equally coercive (or worse) warlords.
> progressivist societies
Do you realize that in many countries free markets are a progressive thing, and that many right wing parties promote high public expenditure and extensive welfare?
It seems to me that as of 2017 the major threat to free markets comes from protectionism, not from socialism.
The new president of the USA, who is a Republican, has in numerous occasions pledged to follow protectionist policies, and many European right-wing parties, not only in UK, are against the EU single market.
So I would say that centre-right or right-wing politicians who are against free markets are not an edge case any more.