Switzerland votes against electronic ID system provided by private companies

A simple Google search shows that the referendum passed with 57% of the voters support, so that leaves us with a 43% who thinks it's a bad idea for one reason or another. Since around 5% of Switzerland is muslim, one could argue building minarets is not such a scandalous idea for Swiss voters.

Here's an article from 2000 about the referendum on the migrant quota. You can read about the SVP's initiative and reaction here: https://www.swissinfo.ch/ger/18-prozent-initiative-deutlich-...

Here's another article from 2000 comparing different right-wing parties in Western Europe (including the SVP) and also mentioning xenophobia as part of their make-up: https://monde-diplomatique.de/artikel/!1243322

Here's an article from 2002 about then SVP-president Oskar Freysinger and his infamous poetry. Please read what he wrote and explain how it's not xenophobic: https://www.nzz.ch/article8J5AD-1.443107

Here's an article from 1999 about a thank-you letter written by SVP-cantonal president Christoph Blocher to the holocaust-denier Jürgen Graf: https://www.bielertagblatt.ch/nachrichten/vermischtes/kontro...

It really doesn't take a lot of digging to understand what the SVP stands for. I mean today their initiative for a ban on burqas/niqab went through with 52% of the vote despite there only being around 20-30 burqa/niqab wearers in all of Switzerland.

I often do see this take that whatever Twitter might currently be mad at is supposedly a hysterical view on things, yet it seems this automatic opposite view is never seen for the hyperbole it is.

USPS maintains a very immaculately curated list of CMRAs (Commercial Mail Receiving Agents). It's not hard because they need to register with USPS in order to receive mail on behalf of customers who pay them for mail-receiving service. USPS is allowed to deny them mail delivery if they refuse to register, and does.

Every place that wants to know your residential address, and insists that it is actually residential, checks the address you provide against this list.

Side note: I knew a woman who bought a storefront that had previously been a mailboxes-etc type place. It was a complete nightmare for her, none of the banks or insurers or credit card companies would believe that was her business' physical address because it was on that list. Apparently it takes 1-2 years to fall off the list. Eventually she had to switch to a small local bank and have the bank manager come to physically inspect the location so they could override the databroker software.

> renting a cheap studio somewhere

That's an ongoing recurring cost. Also nobody will rent a place unless it's (somewhat) inhabitable; buying an uninhabitable toxic dump is actually cheaper than renting anything that can be advertised as inhabitable.

Last of all, I am completely fed up with landlords insisting on credit checks. The data brokers exploit this like you wouldn't believe. That's why they have such perfectly accurate residential addresses for all renters.

> peace-of-mind than dealing with property taxes, crime, pests,

Property taxes are beyond easy. You don't even need to receieve the bill! The amount you owe is a matter of public record, and on the web in almost every jurisdiction. Once a year: look it up, buy a postal money order with cash, write the parcel number on it, mail it, done. Property taxes are also based on the value of the property, so for a toxic dump the taxes are tiny.

Crime and pests don't matter if you don't visit the location. Take the mailbox off the front of the house after closing so no mail can be delivered there by accident.

Definitely buy it through an LLC so that long-tail events (it burns down taking the neighbor's house with it, kids break in and injure themselves, etc) don't come back to you.

I work with systems that use BankID identification, and know for a fact that you are wrong, because many (though not all) of the data-points collected by the banks can be retrieved for payment.

For instance, if you just logged-in with the service I work with, I can retrieve your full-name, birthdate, your marital status, name of your spouse, their birthdate, any children and their IDs and names, where you live, your home and cellphone number, and many many other data points.

From a service owned by a small group of private banks.