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.
> 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'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.
> 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)
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.
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!”
> 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.
> 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.
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.