7 ms·

What is it that makes this possible in Japan? And why doesn't it happen in the US?

by testfoobar 2y ago

cruano 2y ago
American individualism
- astrange 2y ago
  Japanese are more individualist than Americans. They just don't apply this to graffiti. They do sometimes litter, throw up in the sidewalk after drinking, and don't wash their hands after using the train station bathrooms. I mean, Tokyo isn't even that clean. I was just there and saw a rat on the sidewalk every night. They're like NYC and just leave commercial trash bags on the sidewalk instead of using trash bins. (Also frequently saw aggressive "no dumping" signs on the pile of trash bags. Not very high trust!)
  - sho_hn 2y ago
    I think by individualism what people usually mean is the general "me, I got mine" attitude & the idealization of not giving a care to what other people think, i.e. "do your thing". I lot of what happens in the East Asian countries from peer pressure/accountability is to be actively defied in the West, and particularly in America. Keeping things clean because otherwise you might get judged by someone else is almost an incentive to litter.
  - inkyoto 2y ago
    > They're like NYC and just leave commercial trash bags on the sidewalk instead of using trash bins. You might have mistaken it with the organised rubbish collection. It is common in New Zealand where business owners pack up rubbish at the close of business in dedicated, pre-paid rubbish bags that they leave in the front of the shop. A garbage truck comes by later and quickly collects rubbish. The cost of the service is included in the price of the rubbish bag, and the garbage truck won't collect a random or unrecognised bag but people do not do that. It also seems cleaner as rubbish bins require cleaning on a regular basis, and the bags do not.
    - mitthrowaway2 2y ago
      This is for certain what the GP saw.
- SuperNinKenDo 2y ago
  I don't believe Individualism is the issue, unless you mean by that a specifically American variety if Individualism. Individualism also comes with the idea of individual responsibility, and many relatively individualistic countries are close to, or in certain ways exceed, Japan (e.g., in Japan people tend to leave trash in public spaces to a degree that would be inconceivable in many Western countries).
walrus01 2y ago
At the risk of stereotyping an entire nationality, Japanese culture puts a high degree of emphasis on conformity, obeying rules, obeying social hierarchies and keeping things in a generally orderly fashion. For instance, many Japanese primary public schools have no janitor. This is normal. The children scrub the floors, bathrooms and do all the other cleaning tasks in a defined schedule. some random reference examples: https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=japanese+schools+children+clean https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=japanese+...
- astrange 2y ago
  Of course they have janitors. The students sweep the classroom, but they aren't expected to fix a blocked toilet or refill the soap.
  - hinkley 2y ago
    Nah you have a supernintendo or maintenance for that.
- mitthrowaway2 2y ago
  Not sure why you are downvoted. Japanese schools do a good job of promoting prosocial behaviour. A relatively low income inequality may also be a big factor. Also, much less societal tolerance for drugs?
  - userbinator 2y ago
    Also, much less societal tolerance for drugs? As in, none. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_enforcement_in_Japan#Medical_and_recreational_drugs_policy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_enforcement_in_Japan#Medic...
  - astrange 2y ago
    There's certainly a lot of tolerance for smoking, that's just not a drug that makes you commit crimes. (Except littering.) But they're only into mild stimulants because of memories of pervitin abuse. The main difference I can think of is we think it's cool if a celebrity does drugs, but they get insta-canceled so hard they disappear from society entirely.
tokioyoyo 2y ago
Why would I make something worse if I’m ever going to see, touch, feel, think about?
galacticaactual 2y ago
Incredible a site supposedly full of smart people cannot piece this together.
- black6 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - mitthrowaway2 2y ago
    Singapore is pretty diverse, but comparable to Japan in terms of being clean and tidy and high trust. Maybe there's more to it than that.
    - mc32 2y ago
      True, but one difference, is they allowed the culture and population to mature as they transformed from a fishing village to international port and commerce center. And, while they do bring in foreigners, they tend to be domestic maids or medium to high earning foreigners with a decent education and culture.
      - Muromec 2y ago
        It's worth adding, that Singapore being clean is not a magical culture thing, but a deliberate government policy. Lee Kuan Yew writes in his memories that is took a lot of effort to make Chinese drivers stop spitting out of the cars for example and make the river not smell of shit.
        mc32 2y ago
        This is true, but given 60 years it now has become part of the culture there. Maybe if you go out to the poorer places with SEA laborers, you can find betelnut chewers --but those are imported manual labor immigrants and not natives --though maybe you see them in the small islands.
        mitthrowaway2 2y ago
mc32 2y ago
Culture and mentality. They don't have the same urge to vandalize or graffiti. Same as Singapore. They are much more united and much less diverse in various ways. While they have many subcultures, they mostly adhere to a greater social cohesion. To make up for that a bit, they do allow people to get plastered and spray vomitus publicly, including public transit and no one bats an eye. That said, you don't get the public defecation that we get. Even their bums tend to take care of themselves as best they can. They try to maintain a certain decorum despite their dire circumstances. Americans, in a sense, lost quite a bit of their sense of shame.
sangnoir 2y ago
Strong vs weak sense of obligation to the collective (the people around you).
- phs318u 2y ago
  This. There is a fundamental cultural difference which is also reflected in the priorities of municipal governments. Yes, this is a generalisation and yes, it is slowly changing over time. Nevertheless, it’s probably the single biggest driver of this phenomenon.
kennysoona 2y ago
Way more of a hive mind mentality and indoctrination. Expression individualism and going your own way is actively discouraged.
- astrange 2y ago
  They're actually very good at individual expression. https://www.amazon.com/Pure-Invention-Japans-Culture-Conquered/dp/1984826697 https://www.amazon.com/Pure-Invention-Japans-Culture-Conquer...
  - kennysoona 2y ago
    Given the extent to which it's discouraged, it can' be true as a general rule, regardless of the nations inventions. Although most of those examples in the blurb of the book you linked refer to corporate inventions, not individual inventions.
- presentation 2y ago
  You state that very confidently despite having no idea what you’re talking about.
  - kennysoona 2y ago
    Just because you disagree doesn't mean I have no idea what I'm talking about. Japanese culture's suppression of the individual in favor of the community is well documented.
    - presentation 2y ago
      My honest opinion of "Japanese society works great because the whole society is formed by a unique strain of humans who lack any sense of individualism" is a pretty shallow take in my opinion, where most of the corroboration are other clueless people repeating the same basic stereotype. The other commenter mentions the huge impact of Japanese pop culture and technical innovation, which somehow isn't legitimate proof of individual expression, but if you need academic citations then here's some from even back in the '90s arguing that Japan is not less individualistic than the West, and even arguably is less collectivistic depending on how you measure that. [1][2] Here's an example purely from a Japanese stereotype that shows a type of individuality that people could generally understand (just in a form what westerners tend to look down on)—the concept of an otaku [3], or in other words, someone who follows some interest much further than anyone thinks is socially "normal" or "reasonable." And yet these people are generally accepted by Japanese society, if not empowered in the form of a respected "craft" culture, in a way that would just make you a total loser in most of the West. My personal experience actually living in Japan for 7 years now, matches a different common trope in Japanese culture, wherein what people outwardly say to people they don't trust is completely different than what they actually believe and say to people they do trust (honne/tatemae [4]). And unfortunately for the Westerners parroting these stereotypes, they firmly fall into only hearing the tatemae. To the original thread, there are plenty of rational, direct reasons for why Japanese cities can be clean and orderly, that aren't that "Everyone in Japan is some kind of brainless drone," but unfortunately people who justify things based on that excuse will never learn what those things are, doomed to make the same mistakes... very drone-like, in my view. [1] https://sci-hub.ru/10.1111/1467-839X.00043 https://sci-hub.ru/10.1111/1467-839X.00043 (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-839X.00043 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-839X.00043) [2] https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&doi=dc22e75341a98d89de387bc892da8d604f0ae https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&d... e5f [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otaku https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otaku [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honne_and_tatemae https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honne_and_tatemae
donw 2y ago
Simply put: because it's full of Japanese people. Everybody speaks the same language and has the same cultural norms, which are the foundations for any high-trust society. Japanese culture has an exceedingly high focus on the appearance of cleanliness and politeness. The inside of someone's home might be a hoarder's dream, but the outside will be clean. Someone might be an absolute jerk, but to act on that in most social spaces would have very real consequences. Rude behavior, like dancing and playing loud music on a train, will get you arrested here. Misbehavior in Japan is dealt with, and quickly. On that note: Japanese police don't play games. You do not have a right to a speedy trial, there is no jury of your peers, and they can hold you as long as they'd like. The phrase "police brutality" does not translate into Japanese. Do not break the law in Japan. There is a de-facto truce between the Yakuza and the police, as the Yakuza deal with foreign gangs and other problems that would be... difficult to solve with normal police work. Japanese gangs are fiercely nationalistic. If the police don't handle you, the Yakuza will, and although I don't have any data to back this up, I'd wager that the police are the better option. Additionally, Japanese neighborhoods have social responsibilities. Every couple of months, I am responsible for cleaning our trash area for two weeks, and there's usually some kind of repair or cleanup event twice per year. In Japan, many people have lived in the same place for multiple generations, and can trace their ancestry within Japan back for thousands of years. Japan is, quite literally, their ancestral home, and they act like it.
- lolinder 2y ago
  > Everybody speaks the same language and has the same cultural norms, which are the foundations for any high-trust society. This is rarely talked about but is so important, and any comparisons between countries that fail to take this into account are severely missing the mark. The US is 59% white but even that racial category is largely a human construct that doesn't reflect the truly bewildering variety of national origins that lumps together. Norway, meanwhile, is 75% ethnically Norwegian. Finland is 88% Finnish. Japan is 98% ethically Japanese. Many things—from healthcare to crime prevention to sanitation to education to democracy—become substantially easier the smaller the range of genetic profiles and cultural backgrounds you have to account for.
  - 2y ago
rtpg 2y ago
There's a sign in Otsuka (northern Tokyo suburb) like "Otsuka has half the crime rate of 10 years ago!" Things are the way they are, up until the moment that they change. Things can change if people will it into existence. My 2-bit belief is basically simplified "broken window theory", where stuff being broken leads to more stuff being broken, trash leads to more trash... so dealing with cleaning stuff up quickly is good. Generating an environment where people have some pride in what's around them and are also benefiting from the thing themselves, on top of the thing not being busted probably helps a lot. There's a lot of anti-littering campaigns and the like. I feel like the gov'ts as a whole are pretty responsive to new kinds of crime and try to build a public consciousness against it as soon as they realize what's up. Plenty of hooliganism in Japan all over, and plenty of raging, but at the end of the day if there's a nice bench that someone is allowed to sit on in a chill way, people probably tend to not take their rage out on it. Maybe everyone in Tokyo is just ground down from having to work all the time and is just subservient to authority. Who knows!
thinkyfish 2y ago
Lingering colonial attitudes. America, for the longest time was the "exploited space" for Europe and much like India, carries this beaten in attitude that "this is not the nice place". You can find nice places like this but you have to go to the richest enclaves to find it. Japan is its own "nice place".
rawgabbit 2y ago
It is part of Japanese culture. Even in elementary school the children clean their own classrooms. https://youtu.be/jv4oNvxCY5k https://youtu.be/jv4oNvxCY5k
- dpc050505 2y ago
  We cleaned our own classrooms in Canada too and it doesn't keep people from littering.
rufus_foreman 2y ago
You can have a diverse low-trust society or you can have a homogeneous high-trust society, but you can't have a diverse high-trust society. People will trust someone more the more they think the other person is similar to them. Japan has made choices that make it relatively homogeneous, the US has made choices that make it relatively diverse.
- famahar 2y ago
  While not as diverse as the US, Singapore is a melting pot of cultures and religions and is arguably safer and cleaner than Japan. Singling it out to diversity simplifies the issue. It's a million other choices and policies that made the US what it is today.
  - rufus_foreman 2y ago
    Black population of Singapore is what? Hispanic population of Singapore is what? Zero? Not much of a melting pot.
    - phs318u 2y ago
      Seriously? Dude, you’re parading your ignorance. Singapore has a mix of ethnic Chinese, Malay and Indian people (with plenty of ethnic Europeans thrown in for good measure). They’re a mix of Buddhist, Christian, Islamic and Hindu religions. All that in a space smaller than many American cities. If that doesn’t qualify as a melting pot, I don’t know what does.
      - rufus_foreman 2y ago
        >> Singapore has a mix of ethnic Chinese, Malay and Indian people A mix of Asians, Asians, and Asians. The US ain't that.
        phs318u 2y ago
        Wow. Doubling down eh? At this point I have to assume you’re trolling because I struggle to believe anyone could be this obviously racist and/or stupid.

What is it that makes this possible in Japan? And why doesn't it happen in the US?

cruano 2y ago

American individualism

astrange 2y ago
Japanese are more individualist than Americans. They just don't apply this to graffiti. They do sometimes litter, throw up in the sidewalk after drinking, and don't wash their hands after using the train station bathrooms. I mean, Tokyo isn't even that clean. I was just there and saw a rat on the sidewalk every night. They're like NYC and just leave commercial trash bags on the sidewalk instead of using trash bins. (Also frequently saw aggressive "no dumping" signs on the pile of trash bags. Not very high trust!)
- sho_hn 2y ago
  I think by individualism what people usually mean is the general "me, I got mine" attitude & the idealization of not giving a care to what other people think, i.e. "do your thing". I lot of what happens in the East Asian countries from peer pressure/accountability is to be actively defied in the West, and particularly in America. Keeping things clean because otherwise you might get judged by someone else is almost an incentive to litter.
- inkyoto 2y ago
  > They're like NYC and just leave commercial trash bags on the sidewalk instead of using trash bins. You might have mistaken it with the organised rubbish collection. It is common in New Zealand where business owners pack up rubbish at the close of business in dedicated, pre-paid rubbish bags that they leave in the front of the shop. A garbage truck comes by later and quickly collects rubbish. The cost of the service is included in the price of the rubbish bag, and the garbage truck won't collect a random or unrecognised bag but people do not do that. It also seems cleaner as rubbish bins require cleaning on a regular basis, and the bags do not.
  - mitthrowaway2 2y ago
    This is for certain what the GP saw.
SuperNinKenDo 2y ago
I don't believe Individualism is the issue, unless you mean by that a specifically American variety if Individualism. Individualism also comes with the idea of individual responsibility, and many relatively individualistic countries are close to, or in certain ways exceed, Japan (e.g., in Japan people tend to leave trash in public spaces to a degree that would be inconceivable in many Western countries).

walrus01 2y ago

At the risk of stereotyping an entire nationality, Japanese culture puts a high degree of emphasis on conformity, obeying rules, obeying social hierarchies and keeping things in a generally orderly fashion. For instance, many Japanese primary public schools have no janitor. This is normal. The children scrub the floors, bathrooms and do all the other cleaning tasks in a defined schedule. some random reference examples: https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=japanese+schools+children+clean https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=japanese+...

astrange 2y ago
Of course they have janitors. The students sweep the classroom, but they aren't expected to fix a blocked toilet or refill the soap.
- hinkley 2y ago
  Nah you have a supernintendo or maintenance for that.
mitthrowaway2 2y ago
Not sure why you are downvoted. Japanese schools do a good job of promoting prosocial behaviour. A relatively low income inequality may also be a big factor. Also, much less societal tolerance for drugs?
- userbinator 2y ago
  Also, much less societal tolerance for drugs? As in, none. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_enforcement_in_Japan#Medical_and_recreational_drugs_policy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_enforcement_in_Japan#Medic...
- astrange 2y ago
  There's certainly a lot of tolerance for smoking, that's just not a drug that makes you commit crimes. (Except littering.) But they're only into mild stimulants because of memories of pervitin abuse. The main difference I can think of is we think it's cool if a celebrity does drugs, but they get insta-canceled so hard they disappear from society entirely.

tokioyoyo 2y ago

Why would I make something worse if I’m ever going to see, touch, feel, think about?

galacticaactual 2y ago

Incredible a site supposedly full of smart people cannot piece this together.

black6 2y ago
[flagged]
- mitthrowaway2 2y ago
  Singapore is pretty diverse, but comparable to Japan in terms of being clean and tidy and high trust. Maybe there's more to it than that.
  - mc32 2y ago
    True, but one difference, is they allowed the culture and population to mature as they transformed from a fishing village to international port and commerce center. And, while they do bring in foreigners, they tend to be domestic maids or medium to high earning foreigners with a decent education and culture.
    - Muromec 2y ago
      It's worth adding, that Singapore being clean is not a magical culture thing, but a deliberate government policy. Lee Kuan Yew writes in his memories that is took a lot of effort to make Chinese drivers stop spitting out of the cars for example and make the river not smell of shit.
      - mc32 2y ago
        This is true, but given 60 years it now has become part of the culture there. Maybe if you go out to the poorer places with SEA laborers, you can find betelnut chewers --but those are imported manual labor immigrants and not natives --though maybe you see them in the small islands.
      - mitthrowaway2 2y ago

mc32 2y ago

Culture and mentality. They don't have the same urge to vandalize or graffiti. Same as Singapore. They are much more united and much less diverse in various ways. While they have many subcultures, they mostly adhere to a greater social cohesion. To make up for that a bit, they do allow people to get plastered and spray vomitus publicly, including public transit and no one bats an eye. That said, you don't get the public defecation that we get. Even their bums tend to take care of themselves as best they can. They try to maintain a certain decorum despite their dire circumstances. Americans, in a sense, lost quite a bit of their sense of shame.

sangnoir 2y ago

Strong vs weak sense of obligation to the collective (the people around you).

phs318u 2y ago
This. There is a fundamental cultural difference which is also reflected in the priorities of municipal governments. Yes, this is a generalisation and yes, it is slowly changing over time. Nevertheless, it’s probably the single biggest driver of this phenomenon.

kennysoona 2y ago

Way more of a hive mind mentality and indoctrination. Expression individualism and going your own way is actively discouraged.

astrange 2y ago
They're actually very good at individual expression. https://www.amazon.com/Pure-Invention-Japans-Culture-Conquered/dp/1984826697 https://www.amazon.com/Pure-Invention-Japans-Culture-Conquer...
- kennysoona 2y ago
  Given the extent to which it's discouraged, it can' be true as a general rule, regardless of the nations inventions. Although most of those examples in the blurb of the book you linked refer to corporate inventions, not individual inventions.
presentation 2y ago
You state that very confidently despite having no idea what you’re talking about.
- kennysoona 2y ago
  Just because you disagree doesn't mean I have no idea what I'm talking about. Japanese culture's suppression of the individual in favor of the community is well documented.
  - presentation 2y ago
    My honest opinion of "Japanese society works great because the whole society is formed by a unique strain of humans who lack any sense of individualism" is a pretty shallow take in my opinion, where most of the corroboration are other clueless people repeating the same basic stereotype. The other commenter mentions the huge impact of Japanese pop culture and technical innovation, which somehow isn't legitimate proof of individual expression, but if you need academic citations then here's some from even back in the '90s arguing that Japan is not less individualistic than the West, and even arguably is less collectivistic depending on how you measure that. [1][2] Here's an example purely from a Japanese stereotype that shows a type of individuality that people could generally understand (just in a form what westerners tend to look down on)—the concept of an otaku [3], or in other words, someone who follows some interest much further than anyone thinks is socially "normal" or "reasonable." And yet these people are generally accepted by Japanese society, if not empowered in the form of a respected "craft" culture, in a way that would just make you a total loser in most of the West. My personal experience actually living in Japan for 7 years now, matches a different common trope in Japanese culture, wherein what people outwardly say to people they don't trust is completely different than what they actually believe and say to people they do trust (honne/tatemae [4]). And unfortunately for the Westerners parroting these stereotypes, they firmly fall into only hearing the tatemae. To the original thread, there are plenty of rational, direct reasons for why Japanese cities can be clean and orderly, that aren't that "Everyone in Japan is some kind of brainless drone," but unfortunately people who justify things based on that excuse will never learn what those things are, doomed to make the same mistakes... very drone-like, in my view. [1] https://sci-hub.ru/10.1111/1467-839X.00043 https://sci-hub.ru/10.1111/1467-839X.00043 (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-839X.00043 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-839X.00043) [2] https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&doi=dc22e75341a98d89de387bc892da8d604f0ae https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&d... e5f [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otaku https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otaku [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honne_and_tatemae https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honne_and_tatemae

donw 2y ago

Simply put: because it's full of Japanese people. Everybody speaks the same language and has the same cultural norms, which are the foundations for any high-trust society. Japanese culture has an exceedingly high focus on the appearance of cleanliness and politeness. The inside of someone's home might be a hoarder's dream, but the outside will be clean. Someone might be an absolute jerk, but to act on that in most social spaces would have very real consequences. Rude behavior, like dancing and playing loud music on a train, will get you arrested here. Misbehavior in Japan is dealt with, and quickly. On that note: Japanese police don't play games. You do not have a right to a speedy trial, there is no jury of your peers, and they can hold you as long as they'd like. The phrase "police brutality" does not translate into Japanese. Do not break the law in Japan. There is a de-facto truce between the Yakuza and the police, as the Yakuza deal with foreign gangs and other problems that would be... difficult to solve with normal police work. Japanese gangs are fiercely nationalistic. If the police don't handle you, the Yakuza will, and although I don't have any data to back this up, I'd wager that the police are the better option. Additionally, Japanese neighborhoods have social responsibilities. Every couple of months, I am responsible for cleaning our trash area for two weeks, and there's usually some kind of repair or cleanup event twice per year. In Japan, many people have lived in the same place for multiple generations, and can trace their ancestry within Japan back for thousands of years. Japan is, quite literally, their ancestral home, and they act like it.

lolinder 2y ago
> Everybody speaks the same language and has the same cultural norms, which are the foundations for any high-trust society. This is rarely talked about but is so important, and any comparisons between countries that fail to take this into account are severely missing the mark. The US is 59% white but even that racial category is largely a human construct that doesn't reflect the truly bewildering variety of national origins that lumps together. Norway, meanwhile, is 75% ethnically Norwegian. Finland is 88% Finnish. Japan is 98% ethically Japanese. Many things—from healthcare to crime prevention to sanitation to education to democracy—become substantially easier the smaller the range of genetic profiles and cultural backgrounds you have to account for.
- 2y ago

rtpg 2y ago

There's a sign in Otsuka (northern Tokyo suburb) like "Otsuka has half the crime rate of 10 years ago!" Things are the way they are, up until the moment that they change. Things can change if people will it into existence. My 2-bit belief is basically simplified "broken window theory", where stuff being broken leads to more stuff being broken, trash leads to more trash... so dealing with cleaning stuff up quickly is good. Generating an environment where people have some pride in what's around them and are also benefiting from the thing themselves, on top of the thing not being busted probably helps a lot. There's a lot of anti-littering campaigns and the like. I feel like the gov'ts as a whole are pretty responsive to new kinds of crime and try to build a public consciousness against it as soon as they realize what's up. Plenty of hooliganism in Japan all over, and plenty of raging, but at the end of the day if there's a nice bench that someone is allowed to sit on in a chill way, people probably tend to not take their rage out on it. Maybe everyone in Tokyo is just ground down from having to work all the time and is just subservient to authority. Who knows!

thinkyfish 2y ago

Lingering colonial attitudes. America, for the longest time was the "exploited space" for Europe and much like India, carries this beaten in attitude that "this is not the nice place". You can find nice places like this but you have to go to the richest enclaves to find it. Japan is its own "nice place".

rawgabbit 2y ago

It is part of Japanese culture. Even in elementary school the children clean their own classrooms. https://youtu.be/jv4oNvxCY5k https://youtu.be/jv4oNvxCY5k

dpc050505 2y ago
We cleaned our own classrooms in Canada too and it doesn't keep people from littering.

rufus_foreman 2y ago

You can have a diverse low-trust society or you can have a homogeneous high-trust society, but you can't have a diverse high-trust society. People will trust someone more the more they think the other person is similar to them. Japan has made choices that make it relatively homogeneous, the US has made choices that make it relatively diverse.

famahar 2y ago
While not as diverse as the US, Singapore is a melting pot of cultures and religions and is arguably safer and cleaner than Japan. Singling it out to diversity simplifies the issue. It's a million other choices and policies that made the US what it is today.
- rufus_foreman 2y ago
  Black population of Singapore is what? Hispanic population of Singapore is what? Zero? Not much of a melting pot.
  - phs318u 2y ago
    Seriously? Dude, you’re parading your ignorance. Singapore has a mix of ethnic Chinese, Malay and Indian people (with plenty of ethnic Europeans thrown in for good measure). They’re a mix of Buddhist, Christian, Islamic and Hindu religions. All that in a space smaller than many American cities. If that doesn’t qualify as a melting pot, I don’t know what does.
    - rufus_foreman 2y ago
      >> Singapore has a mix of ethnic Chinese, Malay and Indian people A mix of Asians, Asians, and Asians. The US ain't that.
      - phs318u 2y ago
        Wow. Doubling down eh? At this point I have to assume you’re trolling because I struggle to believe anyone could be this obviously racist and/or stupid.