[sonnyblarney]

"In the west we get everything in writing when we do business and rely on the ability of courts to enforce a contract to protect us "

No way.

The courts are a last resort both in business and for personal functions.

My grandfather ran a hardware store and lumberyard back in 'the olden days' and would make windows for a farmer who promised to pay with '1/2 a cow' during slaughter season. The farmer would bring the cow to the butcher 6 months later. Conscientiousness, trust, community.

Note that Brazil has quite a high rate of petty crime, whilst in Japan it's really quite low. Obviously so many factors ... but a fundamental one is culture.

[dmix]

This is probably a better example of how cultures are not a fixed thing and can evolve and change over time. Western culture, especially in rural areas and in smaller communities where you can know everyone (a more common phenomenon in the past), a contract would not have been needed. Or even have been insulting.

The "Gentleman's handshake" is a famous "old way" of doing things in America/the West. So this is not unique to foreign cultures.

But as we've industrialized, urbanized, globalized, etc, etc the use of contracts became a necessity and culture patterns began to reflect this. Partially as a reaction to need: it was harder to trust random people in a city with a few million people than a guy you know from town and see at Church. But also because it just made everything simpler and more efficient to just write it down. It makes any future disputes far less destructive, because what it says in the agreement is what matters, not what you think was the arrangement, which is a lot more personal and potentially destructive to relationships.

So therefore the cultures evolved largely out of need and rationality. And I expect many of the examples listed in China, Indonesia, etc to evolve in a similar way as the culture moves away from farming and rural areas to a globalized urban economy.