[seaorg]

Well some of those are good points but not really. Out of the hundreds of countries with cultures of silence and respect, you can count the “successful” ones on one hand. Semantics? Corruption isn’t the whole picture either. See my other comment. I just say corruption because it’s a pretty good metric of whether or not the machinery of society is functional and rational.

Imagine a spectrum where on one side you can’t say anything that would offend someone or put your immediate interests at risk, and on the other side you blurt out the truth even if you don’t want to.

In the former, corruption is inevitable. Nothing gets called out. In the latter, corruption is impossible. You obviously want to be closer to the latter. Just because you pull up some examples where they are pretty close but not all the way doesn’t really say anything about my argument. But thank you for calling out my hyperbolic use of the word “invariably,” like a good Scandinavian.