I get what you mean about trying to win on the level of people and even companies. Winning or being in the game to win is motivating and when you see an excellent payoff curve where each hour is delivering value, working longer does not feel so bad.
When you use this logic for larger entities though, it falls down. Very few countries are in that kind of rapid growth mode for long as an entire country. Indeed, you've grouped some wildly different countries together there.
South Korea and Japan had periods of extremely rapid and impressive growth where it really did make sense to say that the entire country had organised themselves and sacrificed in order to win. Their goal was to grow their children's standard of living and they succeeded. Is aging, inward looking Japan on 2020 still playing to win? Or have they won enough to enjoy the fruits of that victory?
China is a country that is still on the rise.
Is "the US" trying to win at a national level? I don't think so. I think that parts of the country are full of people who are trying to win but on a national level? I think the best we can hope for is that the humiliatingly inept set of responses over the last six months are a galvanising moment for Americans on the order of Meji era Japan.
I also think that you've given Uncle Bob quite a good job for someone who's not too bothered about winning. Oracle might have a reputation as not such a great place to work, but I rather suspect that making it to their director of QA takes quite a lot of winning along the way!
If you want a tech example of not fussed about winning, maybe someone doing SAP implementation or running internal business logic as a 9-5 is a better example.
Also it's a bit odd comparing Italy and Denmark since I'd be hard pressed to come up with two countries that are so different!
Denmark's labour productivity is the highest in the EU after Ireland and Luxembourg, both of which have distorted figures because of financial concentration of assets there by American tech companies. Italy's is not much more than half that of Denmark.