Amazingly 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.

That’s how grocery stores work now.

We 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).

In NZ and Australia I really enjoyed the farmers selling items along the road in little boxes. Carrots, fruit, etc. All on the honor system.

That’s also a thing in rural Germany.

it's also a thing in Santa Cruz, CA

Yup also common in the Midwestern US

Also 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.

Considering how many of my Balkan countrymen moved there I doubt this works.

Switzerland 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.

Could you expand on the education system and how it helps assimilate second-generation migrants? Thanks.

They 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.

Backpacker 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.

That was nicely described. I can totally understand it. Never thought about it that way :)

This is true - hikers are usually self selecting that way. But the sentiment doesn't hold in general I'd say.

I'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.

This 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.

I’d really like to experience this. Is this something I could do on a week-long hiking trip? Where can I get more info?

Is this a thing? People do that?

Sure, 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 :-)

On the country side you can buy fresh fruits from small unattended shops on the side of the roads: you take a fruit basket and leave the money in a jar. (I only saw this in the Swiss German part, though).

I'm familiar with the roadside produce and the honor box, but for some reason an actual dwelling being open to all, or to just be assumed that by default it is open to all, I guess caught me off guard. Assuming something like that would be open to all, here, would be a dangerous assumption on my part. I don't think I initially took into account the extreme weather conditions during that time, which in retrospect makes a lot more sense.

It's common in the Swiss French part too.

In wilderness parts of the US you are usually allowed, by law, to break into unoccupied cabins/homes in critical situations (eg blizzard, you're lost, etc). You're required to leave identification and contact info and pay for any damages and/or supplies used.

Often people just leave remote dwellings like that unlocked and stocked with supplies, sometimes with a signature book and/or donation box. For larger places some people even build a separate cabin next to the main house for travelers to use.

Oh yeah, 100%, just last week I went to an unmanned stall by the road and bought some beans, left the money in the jar.

Pretty common round here. (in NZ)

Spending a couple of hours hiking up a mountain? Sure. Short-changing or even robbing the warden? I hope not.

In 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.

Perhaps... 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.

Its 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.

impressive. Especially the morphene