Western society (or at least USA society) seems to me to foster the idea of "not my responsibility". My example would be, going to a fast food place and not cleaning your table even though there are trashcans and places to put your tray. Spilling something and not even attempting to clean up after yourself.
Unions have this in spades. "My job is X, I don't do Y, in fact I'm not allowed to do Y as that takes a job away from whoever is supposed to do Y"
I am from an eastern society, So my first day in western society I saw a blue collar worker clean up his food crumbs on a REWE deli table. This might seem normal to do for you, but I swear I never seen anything like that in my life in the eastern society. I was 27 this had profound impact on me than reading any book, I still remember it after a decade.
Huh? US society doesn't foster that. Sounds like you just live in a crappy area or a rich super entitled one. I've never lived in an area where people just left their fast food mess or just left spills. It's never been an attitude fostered anywhere I've lived. To be fair I mainly had experience with the midwest/western USA, maybe the east coast is different.
Maybe some things feel more prevalent. I'd say this is largely confirmation and/or sampling bias. Nobody knows without actually doing the sociology that there are these tendencies. To the extent that we have anecdata, we don't know how much more prevalent such tendencies are. The USA is a big AF place, 400 some million people.
there's definitely a "it's not my job to _____, why would I do someone else's job for them" attitude I've noticed from some people, though I couldn't say what traits they share so as to identify a subgroup.
If they’re willing to hire you when you’re overseas they are generally reasonable. Or trying to exploit cheap labor, but then it’ll be abundantly clear and you can just say no.
Unions have this in spades. "My job is X, I don't do Y, in fact I'm not allowed to do Y as that takes a job away from whoever is supposed to do Y"