> where one is expected to pay for parking at a private grocery store parking lot

God forbid. /s

Public hospitals too. True story. Even though TBH, it's not shocking to me, considering how good public transport is around here. State-run public transport, BTW.

It is shocking to me; car owners get gouged on no less than four different surcharge taxes (license plate registration renewal, road tax, vignette on top of the road tax, fuel tax)... and then public places like that gouge them on parking. Because they haven't been extorted enough and ridden enough and squeezed enough for the luxury privilege of owning and driving a car? "Car owners don't want to be packed like sardines in a tram, bus and train with a whole bunch of other strangers, so let's punish them!" That makes me so angry, AAARRRGGGHHH!!!

I don't think it's about "punishing" drivers, it's just that infrastructure costs money and, TBH, the "vignette" is extremely cheap (to say the least) when compared with what you pay for highways e.g. in neighbouring France and Italy.

As for public transport, I don't have the same experience (I do have a car but use it quite often), I only felt like a "sardine" in rare occasions. There are buses/trams/trains often enough to avoid the busiest "rush hour" trips.

One pays to park at UK hospitals too.

Canada too, and thru the nose!

If you're bringing business to the grocery store, it shouldn't try to gouge you extra. That's over the top even for a capitalist like me.

Why should I, coming by bike, pay for your parking spot? Make the products cheaper and you can pay for the parking yourself.

Would you be willing to pay to lock your bike up, too?

Sure. In many places with scarce place that is the case (i.e. train station).

You are not paying for my parking spot, that's bullshit. The store made a business investment to attract customers, it has nothing to do with you.

When I read such comments, it just reinforces my belief that Switzerland is a car hating country.

I've always imagined that Switzerland is what the United States would have been if the Articles of Confederation had worked. Or even if Ante-Bellum status quo had been able to deal with slavery.

I've even imagined the United States looking more like Switzerland today if the Seventeenth Amendment had never been ratified.

> If one isn't drawing on social benefits, one pays for absolutely everything out of one's own pocket.

Assuming the social benefits actually work, that sounds great and I'd be happy to pay.

> Ayn Rand would be beside herself from happiness there: it's like Galt's Gulch, only it's real.

Ayn Rand would be furious that social benefits still existed at all.

Ayn Rand would be furious that she cannot install air conditioning at home without a special permit which is only granted in exceptional circumstances. Not to mention lots of other environmental regulations which vary slightly depending on the canton. Switzerland may be capitalistic at heart but is very far from being a libertarian utopia.

That depends what one defines as working: one doesn't get didley squat until one sells everything one owns down to 4'000 francs. Only then does one qualify. Low income families get medical insurance help, but they still have to pay, and no, tax payments don't count, because what one is allowed to subtract is symbolic. That's about it.

Unemployment benefit is only for 18 months maximum, if I'm not mistaken, is not part of the welfare, and in the best case scenario only pays 80% of the salary, and there might even be a ceiling to that; if one is a homeowner and one didn't manage to find a job, savings are next, then the cars and bikes and then the house, before welfare will even consider paying anything.

Ayn Rand would be furious that social benefits still existed at all.

Hehe, so true, and all the more hypocritical since she herself drew welfare benefits in the United States for years.

> Hehe, so true, and all the more hypocritical since she herself drew welfare benefits in the United States for years.

Her logic, and I agree, was that she was forced to pay in, she should get it out.

So the system she despised was functioning to her benefit as intended.

That seems like an even more damning indictment of her philosophy than simple hypocrisy.

That's the opposite way to read it

Oh? You prefer that she was just a hypocrite after all?

She was against the use of force to take money. She was forced to give money. She took it back through that same use of force. Government is not a charity and there is no basis under which you should give government a gift of your entire working history.

What do you think a younger, healthier Rand would have said if a disabled person had put that argument to her? Would she have said, yes, you've paid your meager taxes your whole life, so you're entitled to a share of my tax money? Or would she have called them a corrupt, immoral parasite, and wished them cut off and left to struggle and starve?

If Rand had lived in her ideal world, unburdened by taxes and the "parasites" that fed off them, she would have had a little more spending money over the course of her life, and then most likely died in misery, unable to pay for food or medical treatment. Instead, she was saved by the system she despised.

Do you have any evidence that she received more than she paid in, or that she would have died in misery, unable to pay for food, etc

I don't know that for certain. But it seems the most probable of the outcomes, given what we know. But maybe you can convince me otherwise. Do you claim that she lived modestly and frugally, saving as much as possible, and only her lifelong tax burden prevented her from being able to save enough to support herself in her old age?

More to the point, do you have an answer to my first question? Ayn Rand thought it only just that she take from the public coffers she paid into once she needed it. Do you think she would have happily extended the same privilege to anyone besides herself and her husband?

According to some articles online, her lawyer dealt with it and he basically forced her into it. There was no explicit need or desire for it.

Everything I've read said her lawyer talked her into it. He actually sent a consultant to visit her over several days, discuss her objections, and convince her to reconsider. Neither lawyer nor consultant had any authority to force her to do anything, and Ayn Rand of all people was not prone to intimidation. I don't think she'd appreciate the implication that she was that weak-willed.

You've avoided my first question twice now.

So the point is that it wasn't something she sought out. I don't wish to continue down this, you obviously have a predetermined answer.

> So the point is that it wasn't something she sought out.

I never claimed it was. It remains something she chose of her own free will. No one forced her or bullied her; they simply described the pros and cons and let her choose. You've still refused to answer my question, so I have to assume you agree that she would have denied that choice to others.

That makes her a hypocrite. That's all I'm saying.

It does no credit to Objectivist philosophy to refuse to face facts.

Given how much of the country is tipped at an inconvenient angle for parking, I kinda don't blame them for making you pay to keep your car somewhere level.

Mmh Switzerland has one of the best public transport system in the world, and it is heavily subsidized (https://www.voev.ch/de/Service/Downloadsindex.php?section=do...). How does this fit with your ultra-capitalism-one-pays-for-everything description?

All personal transport is heavily subsidized. Especially automobiles unless you live in an area that is completely covered in toll roads.

Considering all the taxes car owners pay in Switzerland, such as street tax, the vignette, fuel tax (which gets completely misappropriated, for public transportation no less, while the car owners sit in traffic jams every day), how are private cars subsidized? The "milk cow" initiative caused a scandal when it was found out that the money drivers have been paying for years in fuel taxes was being misappropriated to fill budget holes elsewhere for decades! How are cars subsidized?

In the US the gas tax is only covers about 20% of the road budget in most states, the rest comes from other sources like income and property taxes. Public transport however is expected to be entirely self sufficient and is held up as an example of the failure of public projects when it ends up being more expensive than driving a car if you don't account for 80% of the roads funding.

That's in the U.S., but we are discussing Switzerland, not the U.S. here, and in Switzerland, the taxes private car owners pay generate huge surpluses which are then embezzled by the federal government to plug up budget holes elsewhere, as well as for subsidizing public transportation. Meanwhile, car owners in Switzerland must sit in traffic jams at least twice per day because no new roads are being built, just the existing ones maintained.

It has to generate profit, subsidized or not.

I don't think you need to be a hard-core Ayn Rand libertarian to believe it is a good idea to make people pay for the infrastructure they use. Anyone who knows anything about infrastructure in the US knows how much we subsidize cars in so many different ways.

Just getting people to pay for their cars via parking, tolls, ect is such a huge win for infrastructure advocates. When you make people pay, suddenly they don't love their cars so much.

I'm a car enthusiast, so much so that my daily driver is a 589 HP car. I pay through the nose to own my cars, and nothing will stop me from loving them. I rode public transport for 16 years and hated it, I'll never ride it of my own free will. Are you saying that loving cars is bad?

A country so hard core capitalist that most of the key players are state (federation, kanton or city) held ? (Transportation, Weapon Manufacturing, main telecommunication companies, main consumer bank, hospitals, schools) and where some of the largest and most influential companies like supermarkets, furniture shops, etc are cooperatives ?

...And of those that are, they're under constant pressure to be profitable (as they should be). Need I remind how the latest round of aggressive, systemic, years long cost cutting at SBB left the infrastructure in need of revision and killed a conductor, while the federal government just booked 2.2 billion CHF ($2.23 billion USD) net profit?

And the Swiss national bank, sitting on nearly 900 billion CHF in foreign currency, desperately trying to keep the value of the Swiss franc from skyrocketing into stratosphere?

I'm not denying anything you just said, I would even add to your list the private health insurance companies with their ever increasing costs, that, for most of the population only serve as a men in the middle for the base (mostly state provided) health care system. I just think its not fair to describe Switzerland as a liberal-capitalist heaven when it clearly is a protected economy with a lot of control from what would normally be defined as the 'state'.

why do you think cooperatives are anti-capitalist or anti-free market?

I've always thought of coops as a natural byproduct of free market systems (sometimes orgs require outside capital, some orgs can be self funded).

I'm wondering the same thing: a cooperative doesn't clash with capitalism, especially if it's for profit.

> Imagine a country so hardcore capitalist, where one is expected to pay for parking at a private grocery store parking lot.

That's perfect. People who don't use cars don't have to indirectly subsidize those who do.

You betcha. Capitalism implemented correctly.

I'm not reading anything in your post that justifies the sarcastic tone.

I'm a sarcastic person, it's a personality trait and that should not be punished or judged because it's now trendy to do so.