I suspect it has more to do with a sense of ownership and community than any fines. US Americans tend to live in their homes, while in many other places people live in their city.
It's a natural consequence of American individualism.
It's a natural consequence of American individualism.
Rotterdam, the Netherlands: if you leave a trash bag on the street, inspectors will go through the trash to find identifiable information. The fine is 300+ EUR.
The system pays for itself.
Edit: I looked it up, they've changed it to a three-strike system. 125/250 for the first two; your choice of 500 or 3 days community service (cleaning up litter) on the third strike.
Have you even traveled much across this huge and deeply diverse country? Or do you just stereotype and generalize by pulling assumptions out of thin air?
There are also many, many very clean communities in the United States, and many people or groups of people who despite loving their personal freedoms and individualism, also take community spirit very seriously in many ways. The country has been famous for this for centuries.
Goddam how simplistic some of the U.S bashing on this site can be, much of it based on incredible levels of ignorance and caricaturesque notions from people who don't even live in the country. Many of them Europeans too, who should know a bit better about avoiding stupid stereotypes and simplistic depictions of complex cultures.
Also, another major myth of the U.S is that social safety nets don't exist. They're not as well woven as they are in many developed countries, but they're very present and heavily funded. In fact, the single largest annual U.S federal budgetary outlay, costing trillions per year is the whole range of social support programs managed by its government (see link below).
What's more, keep in mind that managing such a thing is much harder in a country of 320 million people than it is in your average European state, of which none have a population of over 90 million (Russia excluded). The U.S social safety net could be much better, especially if spending on other things were discounted, but it's not absent or even close to it.
Also, I partly exclude military spending, because though this viewpoint won't be popular at all here, the colossal U.S defense budget works as a sort of (very flawed) global safety net for many other countries in their relations with certain neighbors.
Sure, but this can be summarised as:
It’s great that people donate tens of thousands of dollars to buy a paralysed child a wheelchair. At the same time, it’s a shame that they have to.
Is this post a travel ad?
Do we pretend cities are overwhelmingly clean just because places like Dallas also exist? Are people supposed to first take selfies in NY and Philly, in Chicago, SF, LA, and Phoenix, to be permitted to say they're dirty?
Maybe on average it's not so bad, but "this place is diverse therefore the opposite is true" is worse than anecdata.
> Goddam how simplistic some of the U.S bashing on this site can be,
Nobody is bashing the states. And nobody said American individualism is all bad.
> Or do you just stereotype and generalize by pulling assumptions out of thin air?
Is individualism -> not my problem really a bad explanation? Even when people to try to explain why their hometown in the US is clean it usually starts with "no walled enclaves here/people don't live in little castles".
I think you might taking issue with the assumption that American cities are dirty in the first place, not my attempt at explaining it? It's hard to tell since most of your post is you being upset with me, making accusations, very little substance.
This is an obvious strawman. The point is "this place is diverse, so any widely general statement about it is likely to be false".
Excuse me for not being most charitable trying to extract meaning beyond that.
American cities generally have more of these problems than the burbs so this line of reasoning doesn't work irl.
Also you just haven't seen those fines. Doesn't matter what your sense of community is, once dem fines start rolling in you will NOT litter.
For European city dwellers, "where you live" and a sense of "ownership" extends far beyond the walls of your apartment/home - to incorporate your neighborhood to some extent.
For a lot of US folks in cities, this doesn't seem to be the case.
At least, that's what I got from the post.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/sportskind/2022/11/28/...
In this case, anyway. It's actually pretty difficult to get rid of some things, so people can build up a lot of junk at home - Marie Kondo's books in Japan actually have extra sections on how to get rid of it.
This is made up gibberish IMO, and it is the real, actual problem. No, you won't get shot.
America ... land of submit to the imagined bully.
(How else can this concept be viewed?)
The legal basis for that theory, "stand your ground laws", are suspected to lead to ~700 additional shooting killings each year [1].
In a state with these laws on the book, any neighbor's land has to be viewed as potentially deadly hostile.
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/02/21/stand-your-...
They also do not make it legal for you to pursue someone either.
They have to do with retreating from an assault.
Again, this is just another excuse, and part of the problem. The more Americans view interaction through this lens, the worse they are for it.
Literally people have died thanks to these laws because of trigger-happy arseholes thinking they're backed by these laws, even if there have been verdicts to the contrary like [1].
The problem is: there are way too many guns in circulation in the US, there are way too many vaguely written (or titled) laws that seem to allow this kind of use, and it sends shockwaves through the country regularly. Hell, it even has an impact on policing because police legitimately have to fear getting shot over as benign interactions as traffic stops [2][3], with the result of outright homicides by cops in return [4].
I'm European and hell no I won't ever visit the US until y'all have your gun problems resolved (and your border control under control instead of employing rapists and other goons with a license to search your electronic devices, but that's another topic).
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/24/us/michael-drejka-stand-y...
[2] https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/public-safety/stor...
[3] https://www.police1.com/officer-safety/articles/ga-officer-s...
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Philando_Castile
Made me think of this, a story about neighbors killing each other over perceived trash dumping offenses. America is big enough you can't say it won't happen