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Comment by O__________O | Hacker News Reader

For content, Japan is well known for finding & returning lost items.

From 2020: “With an inner-city population fast approaching 14 million people, millions of items go missing here each year. But a staggering number of them find their way home. In 2018, over 545,000 ID cards were returned to their owners by Tokyo Metropolitan Police – 73% of the total number of lost IDs. Likewise, 130,000 mobile phones (83%) and 240,000 wallets (65%) found their way back. Often these items were returned the same day.”

Source: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200114-why-japan-is-so-...

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A sign of a mannered people. Now let's try it in New York.

No it's a sign of the overall culture, not the individual. You could do this in New York but it would be so unusual that people would think you are scamming them or just look at you like you grew a second head.

I think "a sign of a mannered people" refer to the collective rather than the individual, but it also takes changing the individual to change the collective.

I have a link for you!

> A group of 13 research assistants (11 men and 2 women) were recruited for a trip around the world. They traveled to 355 major cities across 40 countries. In each city, they visited banks, theaters, hotels, police stations, and other public spaces and turned in a “lost wallet,” which they claimed to have found on the street, to a nearby employee.

https://gizmodo.com/researchers-lost-17-000-wallets-in-hundr...

New Yorkers are incredibly mannered, people return items in the subway that people drop or leave behind all the time.

The issue with finding lost items is that people would usually leave them at the police station, if you're familiar with the NYC police department you would know they are one of the most corrupt and overbudgeted forces in the world.

For some reason theyre not returning lost items to people or actually interested in doing so.

They're really good at standing around and parking illegally though.

It's a testament to Confucianism. Same in Korea, you can leave your items unattended, lost items are always returned.

I also wonder if this is more the result of a homogenous society. Since everyone is expected to know the rules and the cost of going against it is known. ex) ijime culture in japan

I don't live there. I have had a lost wallet held for my retrieval in the Washington, DC, suburbs, and have myself returned lost wallets, ID, etc. in Washington. Is New York that different?

I was once visiting Sicily and left my wallet at the airport.

I learned about this when the police pulled me over to return the wallet.

Freaking Sicily!

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