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Comment by jusben1369 | Hacker News Reader

Why do you think this is a US specific issue?

From Europe is easy to notice the difference, random examples: the class actions against tobacco companies are strange from our point of view, or, the other day there was a blog post about somebody losing a member of his family for an illness and he blamed in part a software (it was not the case...), and instead to see a WTF reaction there were plenty of retweets and messages supporting this point of view. Or, even in popular culture like reality shows that are transmitted here, this attitude is constantly present "I did this because of this".

I think you can see it at different levels even on the other side of the medal. I think customer care Americans experience is stellare compared to Europe on average, because Europeans hardly will blame enough the service supplier even when it is the case and this would result in raising the level of service. Apple was one of the first companies to provide US customer service here and at first I and my friends were pretty surprised that this was possible at all.

As with everything I guess this is just a bias and everywhere there are people of all the kinds, but because of culture there are some biases. Like, sicilians can be the most honest often, but surely on average my island exhibits a bias for not being able to stay in line, park the car where it is not possible and so forth. Basically I'm not generalizing.

I had never noticed this about the level of service Apple offers here in the UK, but it is true. Most people don't like making a fuss here, from what I can tell. They grumble about it, but don't actually complain if something is wrong. I think it is changing.

But I would agree that the concept that something you do is someone else's fault is wrong. If anything, accepting that idea leads to daft warning messages on everything, eg. mats on the Land Rover Freelander dashboard for putting stuff with massive warnings reading "Don't put hot drinks here!". It is obvious, but they felt the need to put it there in case someone blamed them for their action of putting a roasting hot drink there and then accelerating swiftly. It's silly.

I thought I'd chip in.

I had a professor visiting from the U.S. and he was absolutely in love with the culture in Europe - how we sort of accept more responsibility.

He told me he would choose building a business in europe vs. the U.S. every single time. He has been sued several times for the most ridiculous things that never would have held any ground over here.

That, he said, was the single best thing about Europe's business culture. Not sure if I agree with that, but he has a point.

funny addendum: he was surprised at the lack of disclaimers on products here. Go figure.

Do not forget that lawsuits in USA have regulatory function. The attitude seems to be: let them sue each other and see who wins. All those lawsuits results and precedents are replacement for European regulations.

While like European way better, it is not fair to compare lawsuits prevalence in isolation. You have to compare the combination of lawsuits and regulations to say which system is better. And Europe has more regulations about a lot of things.

The thing is that the cost of regulation is borne by the government and thus society at large, while the cost of lawsuits is borne by the few unlucky saps that happen to get hit by the issue first.

Lawsuits have regulatory function in the UK too. However, the culture is no where as litigiatious.

Someone in Vietnam released software to the world, therefore this is a story about American culture. That's just how Americans think. It's also necessarily about modern American culture, even if you know absolutely nothing about the past.

Rolling Stone isn't going to run an article about the impact of Flappy Bird on culture in Tazmania or Greece; while it would be tangentially interesting, the subject's incredibly small proximity to the life of the average reader of the American version of Rolling Stone means it won't have the same impact.

Not a "just how Americans think" issue, a "what is relevant to our readers' lives" issue.

Aren't you are proving the parent's point there? You say that only articles depicting their own culture are seem as relevant to the american reader, which is what he claims.

That's absolutely not the case in other places of the world. In some cases, even the opposite problem arises (that is, discriminating against your own country/culture and favouring a foreign one)

No, I said an article about a culture only tangentially related to the reader will be less relevant than an article directly related to the reader.

(To note, the article wasn't about American culture, it was a personal interest piece on a person who was unprepared for the effects of the success he experienced.)

If by "other places in the world" you mean areas that are small enough or have an ephemeral-enough regional identity to have developed strong codependent identities with other regions, then I would certainly agree.

Living in a number of places has shown me that, in larger countries/communities with defined identities, internally facing publications will publish stories that are strongly relevant to their reader.

Because, as I said, it wouldn't make a lot of sense to spend that sort of space on an article that wasn't relevant to the reader.

As a transplant to America I agree with the difference in cultures but to be fair, you're comparing "other places of the world," which tend to be much smaller and more homogenous that the US, to a country founded as a loose federation of states divided largely along political and religious lines.

Cultural diversity (and exceptionalism, etc) is all rolled into the DNA of the country.

You realize antirez is Italian, right?

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