Meaning it's more acceptable to not comply with cultural standards: i.e. keep standard hours, have a job, not marry/have kids, or whatever else the standards of behavior are.
I'm not convinced though that developing countries are actually lower compliance but that's what the OP means.
Cultures of course vary in the particular norms they enforce. Many East Asian countries don’t have strong social norms in favor of procreation despite otherwise being strongly norm oriented. But of course a society that isn’t strongly norm oriented loses the ability to enforce that norm as well as other socially desirable behaviors.
COVID is another example. The breakdown of norm-oriented behavior has been especially acute where the counter-culture of the 1970s collided with deindustrialization. The fallout was mitigated in certain blue areas by high levels of education. But I’m much of the country it ended up destroying the framework of norms that helped mediocre and not especially educated people make good decisions.
I don't know about that. In my experience, with smaller places I'm familiar with, the cultural input only enriches, there's no degradation (though I am of course aware of certain areas of certain countries where they failed to handle immigration correctly and created isolated ghettos - that never goes well. But it does not have to be that way).
"sophisticated set of shared rules and norms" - I don't know what that's supposed to mean. I definitely get a bad feeling from a sentence like that though.
Well, you don't get to define what's "worse-off" for another culture. And should that give us pause about current policies that may cause the same behaviour later on?
The thing is that all behaviours carry cultural aspects to them. But clearly some behaviours lead to better economic outcomes than others right? Being sober, working hard, valuing education, cooperating well, these are cultural traits. This fact alone doesn't mean it's wrong to prefer them.
Don't be so quick to judge the issues of developing country's societies through the lens of western cultures. What appears similar at surface level, might have completely different root causes and effects. The other replies here have added some interesting points.
I know where you're going with that but some cultures really are better in some ways. I don't think cultures that overly promote conformity and are "strong" for example. Nor are ones that tolerate too much corruption or dysfunctional behavior. Neither are ones that have no sense of self-preservation and allow infinite outside influence.
I'm not convinced though that developing countries are actually lower compliance but that's what the OP means.
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