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The post is a strong critique on the pervasive lack of care in various aspects of society, from government services to everyday interactions. It highlights specific examples, like poorly designed bike lanes and unresponsive bureaucrats, to illustrate how minimal additional effort could vastly improve outcomes. The author expresses a longing for a community where people genuinely care, drawing comparisons to the higher standards observed in Japan and reminiscing about a past era in America post-WW2. The post ends on a reflective note about the challenges of fostering such a community in the current environment.

Nobody Cares

People care when they are either collectively raised to care (as in Japan) or they are incentivized to care. The easier path in the USA is incentivization.
The very worst comes from those that have no incentive. The worst offender there is government. All they need to do to keep on going is adhere to policy and regulation (and evade any real responsibility).

You’re conflating “to care” with “to care about the things I care about”. For instance, you claim that “nobody cares” about the color of the lights, but simultaneously you seem to “not care” about the difference in electricity use, lifespan, or any other reason that those lights may have been changed.
In a society like Japan there are societal repercussions for non-compliance with social norms. Societies like the US place higher value on creativity, and was literally founded on rebellion, so the overall result is more creative and rebellious people. Placing a value on one way over the other is erroneous. One way is not better than the other. For instance, yes, there may be more people ignoring social “niceties” in the US than in Japan, but Japan also has a long history of abusive work hours, and suicidal depression. Certainly for the people struggling with those issues, it’s not “better”.

80% of people in any country - DO NOT CARE. It is in our nature. So path to the success - make people who cares in charge.
If you care about the result and are charismatic enough to demand quality from your subordinates, things are moving forward. There are still 20% who do nothing under any circumstances - they should be fired. Natural selection should bring them to the streets of Los Angeles.

It’s worse in the bigger cities(in the US at least). I think mainly because there’s a sense of anonymity. More rural communities where everyone knows everyone you can’t really get away from your reputation. Unless you’re in the government then they still don’t care and blame it on the bureaucracy. I think it stems from an overabundance of everything. Corporations and Governments rule the country and every single one of them have 20 people doing what 1 or 2 people could do. So everyone’s attitude is “so and so will take care of it.” Or “i did the last one so I’m not doing this one.” And that attitude trickles down into everyday things like putting your shopping cart away like a decent human being.

There’s a lot of play of culture in this case. Taking the case of the US, as opposed to Japan, there’s an inherent stress on individualism. Which is what pushed the US post WW2 to it’s peak at the height of Pax Americana. But hardcore capitalism brings larger changes only possible with appropriate incentives.
So people can seem to care on the outset, but can be driven by different incentives. Japan throughout it’s history has had a honor code centric approach which has led to a lot of importance on the value of individual contribution. In this case, the US and Japan comparison would look like apples and oranges.
For example here in India, we have a tendency to care less purely from the sheer amount of population we’re surrounded by. Caring for every minutiae can become quickly exhausting.