[kops]

AFAIK neither the problem, nor the solution is specific to America. Link bonus, salary or promotion to the amount of noise a guy makes and you can have an army of self-promoting assholes overnight anywhere in the world. The baby that cries the most, gets the milk etc. etc...

[Hermel]

> anywhere in the world

Not to the same degree. A common belief is that the Americans are especially good at self-promoting in comparison to their European counterparts.

Maybe this can be partially explained by the size and nature of the US labour market. The more often one changes jobs and the less likely it is that the new employers knows the previous one (and thus can rely on their testimonial), the less necessary it is for an employee to be able to promote themselves in job interviews.

[judk]

Indeed, self-promotion is an obvious byproduct of democracy and bottom-up economy, where the population at large chooses winners (through voting or market force$) , instead a top-down command economy where everyine is rated by fixed measures, or a caste society where privilege is hereditary and no one gets promoted or demoted, so no one needs to impress anyone else.

[nfoz]

Self-promotion is an obvious byproduct of a highly competitive society in which actors need to struggle against each other in order to survive, rather than a more cooperative society where there's less pressure to survive and less pressure to get as far ahead as possible.

[judk]

Would love to see such a cooperative society in this universe. I guess ants and bees have that?

[nfoz]

Societal competitiveness vs. cooperation can be observed in the differences between human cultures, even similar ones. http://www.alfiekohn.org/books/nc.htm does a good job contrasting cultures in this regard, iirc. Moving to New York from Canada, I was quite surprised how much more competitive people were, even about things that don't matter. It's just there.

[inopinatus]

This is the most commonly quoted reason for negotiated pay disparity at senior levels: in many cultures, women are conditioned to underrate themselves, men the opposite.