Ahh! That is where Cass Sunstein went.
Mono-cultures are easier to convince to work for “societies needs” because their cohesive culture/race/language all makes them close connected than even most US families.
In those countries you know strangers who live next door better than you do your cousins in the USA.
It can be a great place to live, and a scary country to piss off.
They preserve their culture because it is their FAMILY.
This is why Japan is not taking hardly any camel humpers and unlike Europe while both their birthrates may fall into the toilet, there will still be a Japanese culture around in 100 years even if their are only less than a few million Japanese left.
Finally went back and read the article:
The authorities do indeed design features into rail station that optimize crowd flow-through and it’s true the overhead makes a NON-STOP series of announcements of impending train arrivals, apoligies, cajoling, safety reminders, etc.
Those are all noteworthy.
But the REAL forces permitting the phalanxes of people entering and departing center on upbringing almost from birth:
You have to consider the needs of others, you have to remember you’re a part of a group, you’re not special, etc.
I’d say the only thing close to that thinking in the USA is in the USMC, or being Amish, or maybe part of a highly cohesive religious sect.
I’d say the very many things that make the INSIDE of a Japanese rail station work so well are mostly to be found OUTSIDE of those same stations.
Same as in the schools:
Americans sometimes tell themselves they’d like Japan’s school system, and yeah, they do really work great in very many ways.
But the factors permitting that are utterly unacceptable to 90% of American parents - discipline (to include the physical variety, sometimes, in spite of the formal rules) the prevalence of student tracking (in spite of the bizarre things always said in America about that, i.e., that there IS no student tracking in Japan).
Origination of “Nudge Theory” sounds like the way an academician in some ivory tower would say, “It’s ok for dictators to bully individuals, as long as they mean to built a Perfect Society”.
You can’t take a “I gotta be me/I like you cuz you’re different”-type population and then bully them, saying “Well, I’m just NUDGING you, and nudging is okay, hey look at this study...”