Japan's cleanliness and orderliness made me wonder how societies build high standards beyond economic measures.
How does a culture come to expect a high standard of quality in everyday life?
In Japan, I kept noticing orderliness and cleanliness in places where nobody seemed to be making a show of it. These qualities do not seem to fit neatly into an economic explanation. They have something to do with shared expectations and the small choices people make in public.
I wonder how a society builds those expectations, and how much they depend on things that are difficult to measure in economic terms. Perhaps standards become cultural when people maintain them even when there is no obvious reward.