[bradleyjg]

Well, exactly. They tried to indoctrinate kids not to take drugs and it failed miserably. So the claim that it’s super easy for the government to shift culture seems wrong, no?

[ohyeshedid]

Rather than making a bigger picture point out of a single example, I'm thinking;

In the US, dependent on location, a person may be living under several different governments.

Governments recognize and/or create holidays, and holidays can go on to be cultural events.

Governments organize and finance festivals and events, which can and do become culture of a place or people.

They built statues, museums, parks, libraries, theatres, etc; all with several different levels and layers of culture.

You'd need to start defining parameters of what is a government, what is a culture shift, etc.

[bradleyjg]

Okay. If the US government, in the form of the NIH, spent 1.8 billion dollars trying to get people to exercise more do you think we’d see substantially more exercise happening than we would have otherwise?

[ohyeshedid]

Personally, I would doubt "substantial" increases, but that would depend on how you'd want to define that and such.

That doesn't mean they can't, won't, and don't, shift cultures in many other ways.