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I don't think that's as different as you think with many many other cultures. In Eastern South Asia and the American South, You hear similar stuff all the time.

In the American Northeast, its still there but in finance related terminology.

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For sure, but there different degrees of behaviour. Individuals everywhere are ultimately driven by a survival-of-the-fittest instinct, but some cultures do a better job of creating a negative pressure in the interest of collective benefit. The clearest way this manifests is in the queue system, where some places are better able to queue up when a need arises and some places absolutely cannot.

Is that really true ? Queuing systems seem like a gross simplification of the instinct.

It seems more like the "survival of the fittest" instinct in American/Western societies has evolved from overt competition to more sophisticated and hidden forms within financial and economic systems (blackmail too recently).

I guess the masses don't engage in it because the elites exert extraordinary amounts of power/culture. See Elon Musk, See the House of lords, etc. The negative pressure they create is to simply keep their power.

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