Swiss reject plans for bigger motorways and extra rights for landlords

Traffic flow would theoretically be smoother if everyone understood basic fluid dynamics concepts, but their selfishness would make that pointless because it would turn into "yes, I could go slower to make traffic go more smoothly for the people behind me, but fuck them! I gotta get my caramel white chocolate macchiato!"

Don’t forget all the diplomats. Additionally, they will never be pulled over. They can basically do whatever they want.

Isn't the swiss railway system pretty fucking good? Why did you drive instead of taking a train?

Or take a fuckin direct train from Geneva to Lausanne. Why would you ever drive this route?..

One of my most radical opinions is that all cars should be blackboxed and outfitted with sensors for said blackbox. If the car honks or brakes too sharply, the sensor data is recorded a time prior to and after the event, and a police report is filed. If you want to un-file the police report, or report it as some sort of triviality, this should be done on the website of the traffic police, and is not guaranteed. This way, insignificant events have an out, and repeat "trivial" offenders can be statistically correlated and be fined or have their license revoked.

Whether your insurance company should know these stats... IDK. I know this entire idea is very surveillance-state, which I don't like. But I am really thoroughly bothered by how expensive, dangerous, and otherwise harmful motorism is to all of us.

I'm not surprised the EFAS got approved. It is a complex topic where you would need to read almost the whole KVG to truly understand what's going on and the messaging of the opponents was sub-optimal to put it mildly.

The opposing opinion in the official booklet, at least for the German version, was incomprehensible and without concrete links to the substance of the issue or their claims. E.g. HOW are the insurers getting more power? What will they be able to do, that they can't already? What are the absolute numbers, that show that premiums will rise, when the official report mentions sinking costs? Why will the quality of care deteriorate? They mention privatization, but don't tell you what would facilitate that...

The Pro side mainly stressed the positive of correcting the disincentives towards cheaper ambulatory treatments through changing to the uniform financing formula, which in and of itself and without further context is a valid and good point. Both substantively and politically.

And my biggest problem lies with the official 'examining review' from the Federal Chancellery. I know it is normal to try and project what the changes in law could affect in reality. Imho they did it in a biased way. Why am I saying that? Because every argument and scenario they brought up was positive and basically the pro-opinion reads like a summary of the official review. Also: When making simplifications from the actual legal text, they used a more positive description (E.g. "coordination" vs. "restriction" talking about the states limiting offered services). There aren't many absolute numbers to understand just how much money will shift between insurers, states and patients and what that would mean. In such a situation it is even more incumbent on the opponents to make the downsides clear and fill those gaps.

When you get to vote for multiple submissions every 2-3 months, turnout tends to be lower. Probably only people who hold a strong opinion about the topics of the current vote will actually vote.

45% is completely normal here. We have votes every couple months, you vote when you’re interested.

Our “yearly voter turnout” is around 76%

About 80% of voters did vote over the last few years, just not every time.

Yeah but how many time you had to vote during this last decade?

Wtf? When?

OH shit 2924 was 63% turnout and 2020 was 62%. I didn't know.

Oh that's an easy one. It's because the state serves the interests of capital.

I have no idea what the situation is in Switzerland, but in Holland we had a pro-business, center right government for many years before their neglect of the common people caused so much rot that the far right has taken power and begun trying to smash up everything.

Anyway, their neo-liberal approach was that there must be a market solution to every problem. So, not enough affordable rental properties must mean that landlords don't want to rent their properties because renters have too good of a deal. So the only possible solution must be to deregulate the rental market as much as possible, including getting rid of renter protections.

Again, I have no idea about the motivations or history in Switzerland, just sharing a perspective from a lower altitude.