I think the US generally is especially about this, and I think it explains a lot of behavior we have that may seem odd or nonsensical to outsiders. There's a R

I think the US generally is especially about this, and I think it explains a lot of behavior we have that may seem odd or nonsensical to outsiders. There's a Russian photo-blogger I read a bunch of posts by years ago, and he pointed out something about us that I hadn't fully appreciated before: we post notices everywhere. Simple statements and whole pages of legalese junk. All over the place. You can't un-see it once it's pointed out. The Land of the Free was one of only two countries (he'd been damn near everywhere) that he noted as having this behavior of posting signs everywhere telling you what you couldn't do. The other was Australia, which he found to be the only place much like the US in a lot of other ways, too. Of course, we do it because lawyers say we need to, so if someone does something stupid and gets hurt we can say we "told" them not to, so they'll lose if they sue us. Or so if we decide we want someone gone we can point to a posted rule as the reason even if that's not actually why (and of course posting a rule somehow gives it magic power, versus just deciding on it). Blame dispersal/deflection. We're also big on tying up responsibility, punishment, and blame all together, in ways that I suspect are pretty damn harmful overall, including economically. Leads to a pretty gross culture of dishonesty, for obvious reasons.