>Yeah it's so weird seeing americans treat this as some kind of Hard Problem when it's been part of our daily life for 15+ years
As a non-American who is disproportionately aware of US culture and issues even though I've only been there a couple of times, I think it's part of a general pattern.
My pet theory is that the combination of the USA's size, relative geographical isolation, historically strong economy, and youngish history have led to a critical mass of its population being completely unaware that there are certain things that can be done differently and arguably better, as they are done elsewhere.
Most of the developed World is composed of either small neighbouring countries between which ideas are more easily shared, countries with long histories and limited resources that have had the need to improve their efficiencies and learned from their pasts, or countries who had to make concerted efforts to either become develop or recover after catastrophic war. Meanwhile, the population of the USA (and to a lesser extent Canada, and maybe Australia and NZ) has had little exposure to alternative ways of doing things, and no motivation to do so—everything is fine.
Off the top of my head, I can think of the following things that are done better outside the US but most Americans are unaware that alternatives are even possible: e-payment methods and cheap bank transfers, home insulation, vote counting, prices including sales tax, intersections (roundabouts vs 4-way STOPs), electrical plugs, kick-resistant front doors, punch-resistant interior walls, toilets that don't need a plunger handy, SSNs not being a de-facto immutable password, etc.
I've sometimes been tempted to compile a detailed list of articles on each of these things on a blog, but not being American I feel it would be very unfair and would seem gratuitously condescending on my part. I hope this doesn't come across as dismissive or an attempt at a flame-war, it's just my observation. I have nothing against the USA, and I am absolutely not implying that no good ideas come from the USA! Many great ideas were born in the USA, and are then adopted or adapted by other countries. The difference is that the flow doesn't seem to go the other way.