This is related to high-trust and low-trust societies. In a high-trust society, norms prevail and in general you can expect a certain level of treatment from e

This is related to high-trust and low-trust societies. In a high-trust society, norms prevail and in general you can expect a certain level of treatment from everyone: your government, your employer, your neighbor, and the person next to you on the train. In a low-trust society there is no guarantee of norms being universal, so you rely on physical security, contracts, lawyers, and law enforcement to enforce standards of behavior. Low-trust societies are very taxing. Every transaction is an opportunity to be scammed. Every unlocked door is an opportunity to be robbed. It forces everyone to be highly defensive about everything. The US has always been somewhere in the middle, compared to high-trust countries like Japan, and low trust countries like South Africa -- but it definitely has regressed to lower-trust. And part of that regression means that more norms have to be encoded as actual laws to maintain order.