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Comment by cedws | Hacker News Reader

My completely unqualified opinion is that this kind of behaviour is linked directly to intellectual ability. Returning the cart requires self-discipline but also implies a thought process around upholding and creating social order. Even fear of shame implies a desire to uphold social standing with others.

Whereas not returning the cart can only be explained in two ways: a thought process that says ‘not my problem’ (selfish, disorderly, bad for society) or no thought process at all, like an animal with no higher order thinking.

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I strongly doubt it is related to intellectual ability but cultural expectations.

Some years back someone did a study about which country's US diplomats at the UN had the highest number of NYC parking tickets. Diplomats don't need to pay parking fines due to immunity. This is very similar to returning shopping carts.

As I recall, it was clearly correlated with country, which in turn was connected to national corruption rates. Ahh, here: https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w12312/w123...

> Overall, the basic pattern accords reasonably well with common perceptions of corruption across countries. The worst parking violators – the ten worst are Kuwait, Egypt, Chad, Sudan, Bulgaria, Mozambique, Albania, Angola, Senegal, and Pakistan – all rank poorly in cross-country corruption rankings. While many of the countries with zero violations accord well with intuition (e.g., the Scandinavian countries, Canada), there are a number of surprises. Some of these are countries with very small missions (e.g., Burkina Faso and the Central African Republic), and a few others have high rates of parking violations but do pay the fines (these are Bahrain, Malaysia, Oman, and Turkey; we return to this issue below).

I've read far too many stories of people who don't clean up after themselves at a store or restaurant, justified by "no need - they pay someone to do this" or even "it's a good thing I do this otherwise you wouldn't have a job" to know it's simply intellectual ability.

> I strongly doubt it is related to intellectual ability but cultural expectations.

The IQ of a crowd isn't the same as the IQ of the people in it, but it is related.

What do you mean by this?

The IQ of an individual in a crowd is materially different than the average IQ of the entire crowd.

How is the average IQ of an entire crowd relevant to parking violations of UN diplomats with diplomatic immunity?

> I've read far too many stories of people who don't clean up after themselves at a store or restaurant, justified by "no need - they pay someone to do this" or even "it's a good thing I do this otherwise you wouldn't have a job" to know it's simply intellectual ability.

That they can barely articulate a verbalized post-hoc rationalization* for that kind of behavior doesn't prevent them from lacking the minimum processing power needed to achieve awareness of how they are leaving ungreased the machinery of the commons. Into which they will keep being embedded, pulling levers left and right all day long.

Even a moderately zero-sum minded sociopath can be aware of the perks of investing a modicum of well-placed niceness; if for no other reason, just to avoid losing social capital.

* And probably a memetic one, hardly an original thought.

Here's an account at https://notalwaysright.com/the-dunkin-duchess/396274/ :

> Our college study group meets a few times a week. They’re long sessions, three or four hours each. Whenever someone runs out for food, we all chip in a little extra so the runner doesn’t have to pay. Simple deal: “If you fly, I’ll buy.”

> About an hour into one session, one of the girls stretches and says she’s heading to Dunkin’ Donuts.

> Me: “Ooh, I’ll buy if you fly.”

> She stops mid-step and gives me this horrified look.

> Girl: “I don’t bring food to other people. Servants do that.”

The articulate reason for not bringing a cart is because their station in life is above menial work.

Regarding social capital, the story goes on and finishes with:

> The room goes dead silent.

> We’ve been doing this for weeks, with everyone taking turns, no big deal. But apparently, today, we’ve got royalty in our study group. She wondered why she was left out of any group meals after that…

Now imagine someone with money, who never had to clean up after others (and hires people to clean after themselves), and has little interaction with the working class. Why do you think they'll care about what the plebes think?

Wow. Can you give some more geographical context on where this happened and where the girl is from? (Obviously, not revealing personal details)

I have known some rich snobs in my life, but I have never been someplace where a even the rich snobs would say something like that out loud (even if maybe they were thinking it)

The link says it took place in the US.

There's a minority of people wealthy enough to grease everything with money or really powerful connections. In a conversation involving people doing their own shopping and eating at places where you are presumed to take your tray to the bin I wasn't even thinking about them.

Those who lack that surplus wealth are "leaving money on the table", so to speak, by not caring about others. That's dumb.

And her pedigree or whatever gave her those aristocratic ways didn't save her from mild ostracism at the end of the story, so... That's social capital she left on the table. That's also kinda dumb even if she had enough money/power to enable god mode. It's even dumber if she didn't have it.

One of today's entries from that site is "Wario Kart", at https://notalwaysright.com/wario-kart/398386/

A customer returns two abandoned carts. Another customer assumes the first is an employee. After learning the truth, “Stupid woke b****! Why are you trying to confuse people!”

There's all sorts of stories on that site from people who make a mess. Some think it's actually a good thing to do, like https://notalwaysright.com/food-trash-for-thought/344130/ :

> One of the friends of a friend suddenly empties the car’s ashtray and garbage onto the parking lot floor.

> Me: “Hey! Pick that back up!”

> Guy: “Nah, they pay people to do that; I’m doing them a favor.”

In that story there is a mild bit of rebuke, but it's clear that's not the first time that guy did that.

Sometimes it's power tripping, like https://notalwaysright.com/if-you-act-like-trash-you-become-...

> Like most fast food places, there are several trash cans conveniently placed with counters attached, so people can clean up their own messes.

> There are always those special folks, though, who leave their trash on the table for the employees to clean up. Usually, it’s just trash, but there is this group of four young guys who always aim to outdo themselves.

It took exceptional circumstances for them to face consequences, in this case, losing a pair of expensive sunglasses. Again, it clearly wasn't the first time.

Or some just think that's the way things are, and pass on that belief to the next generation, like https://notalwaysright.com/mopportunity-knocks/398025/ "

> A mum and her young child are coming through my lane when the child spills a lot of juice all over the floor and part of my register. The mum, without hesitation, says to the child:

> Customer: “Don’t worry. It’s their job to tidy up.”

Again, there is rebuke

> My shoulders sink as I’m about to accept my fate, when my manager, who happened to be nearby, runs over with a wet mop (we keep one by the registers at all times just in case) and hands it to the mum.

> Manager: “Nope. Your monkey, your circus.”

> Customer: A bit discombobulated. “That… that’s not how it works!”

But the reason these stories make that web site is because rebuke is rare, and thus noteworthy, while showing that a lot of people - not just those who are wealthy or have really powerful connections - do this.

I fully acknowledge their existence. I'm sure I most certainly engage into equivalent antisocial behavior in some way or another wherever I most lack awareness, and my sole point is that, for most of us, when we are doing that, we dumb.

Slightly veering OT:

While I get the sore need for a place to vent after being subjected to a customer-facing workday, the website you keep linking to gives me in aggregate the rage farming vibes that are as prone to distort everyday reality as blind naïveté could be.

I don't really think you understand my point. It isn't simple antisocial behavior. It's a multi-generational learned belief in a hierarchical class structure which will persist so long as enough people reject equality and solidarity, and instead actively protect their class privilege. (In modern parlance, "anti-woke" is roughly the opposite of "check your privilege").

To give but one of many examples, when rail passengers called Black porters "George", as if the porters were owned by George Pullman, those passengers reinforced racist Jim Crow laws. There were not dumb or sociopaths, but rather gained more social capital from others of their class (or more powerful) than was lost to the Black porters.

I have duly noted your bothsiderism position. My point, however, was to give counter-examples, such as verbalized explanations which were not post hoc, to show why I disagreed with your characterizations.

A lot of it has to be education too, for exemple in some cultures the outside, ie outside your own place, is seen as more or less a giant trash, so people see no problem dumping their shit even right in front of their own building. In my culture the outside is seen as a common shared place and definitely not a trash, I remember my grandpa telling me not to spit on the ground or to pick up my candy wrappers when I was maybe 4 or 5 years old.

For me it was an objective truth until I moved to a more culturally diverse city, these people are no dumber than I but they simply do not understand my pov

To me that blows my mind, not because of viewing the outside as trash, but being content with living in trash. To me the observation, that the outside is a giant trash, would give me a desire to order it.

I have heard this opinion echoed by Indians, the combination of both the outside not being their problem, and thinking someone else (lower caste) will take care of it.

There are city workers and occasionally homeless people who pickup trash (to salvage or sell). I'm not sure how this opinion of theirs is formed but I can assure you nobody is throwing around trash with anything remotely caste related in their mind. It isn't even in consideration.

Its plain old apathy and no sense of responsibility or shared ownership. Outside is just something you share with other 1.4 billion people of the country.

The cycle usually goes like one idiot starts throwing trash, other idiots start adding their trash too, few weeks/months govt workers do a bare minimum job of clean-up, repeat.

Most stimuli result in habituation over time. Live with trash long enough and you’ll stop noticing it so much.

what if your efforts are futile due to sheer amount of other people producing trash?

it is not so simple of a problem with clear cut solution.

I'm talking about people spitting in front of the elevator doors, people opening their mail in the common building area and immediately throwing the envelope on the floor, people finishing their drink in front of the building and discarding the bottle by the side of the entrance door

We don't need alien tech to solve these, it's 100% an education issue.

They should be educated, sure, but this can't be an education issue. Rather an issue of crappy upbringing and low intellect or, when it's a cultural thing, crappy culture.

This depends if you only understand learning in school to be education, or if you mean the whole education that a pupil underwent, which I think was the case here. To me upbringing is another word for education.

Then I would use the legal and executive system, to deal with this people. That's why they exist after all.

That makes sense, but sometimes it's even more confusing than that!

When I lived in Philadelphia here in the USA, it would vary street by street and block by block even when there were no ethnic or economic divides.

One block would have litter all over the place and the next one would be clean. To this day, I am still puzzled by that.

There are some very mundane possible explanations, probably due to a combination of pedestrian traffic patterns and wind. (My observation is that some % of litter, probably a large % IMO, is simply trash that blew out of trashcans as opposed to being intentionally discarded)

Still, I found it baffling and surprising

I tend to reduce this even further: you as a person are either fundamentally capable of considering (and caring about) how your actions affect others, or you aren't.

You can draw a pretty clear line across about half of america with this standard. It's depressing.

I reduce this even further,

You're an animal, or your not. We shouldn't give animals human rights.

>like an animal with no higher order thinking.

In Germany I see far fewer abandoned shopping carts than in America.

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