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Comment by orionion | Hacker News Reader

My first boss 45 years ago at HP (a petite Japanese lady) had a saying she learned as a child, "出る釘は打たれる" --- “The nail that sticks out gets hammered down.”

Needless to say many of her American workers had no conception of this cultural ideal, much to her great consternation!

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Janteloven (Jante's law) of Denmark is rather similar. [0]

Also, doesn't English have the expression "Tall poppy syndrome"?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Jante

Yeah, the premise that the concept of societal consequences for acting out or against the status quo is so alien to Western culture that Americans literally can't comprehend it is absurd.

Also see "don't stick your neck out," "the squeaky wheel gets replaced," "don't rock the boat," "speech is silver, silence is golden", "shit rolls downhill", several Biblical proverbs and some Shakespeare.

It’s funny because in Canada/US the saying is: “the squeaky wheel gets the grease”

I’ve never ever seen “replaced” being used instead of “grease”.

There was a time where there was a huge advantage to individualistic societies over collectivist. Rule-breakers built the companies, invented the technologies that super-charged their economies.

Now in a modern, globalized world any new technologies are immediately imported(stolen?) and produced more cheaply and exported back undercutting/crippling the benefits that would otherwise have been had.

You can only go so far as a society copying work of others. You can’t progress without innovation and if innovation is happening in other parts of the world then your are highly dependent on them. The society that produces innovation is never crippled because others are copying them.

Yes they are if they if the competitors are able to produce goods much more cheaply due to not having to sustain the cost of environmental/labour regulations. And for the most part, its winner takes all.

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