Why does America break nice things?

Case in point: Last year, faculty at two Canadian universities created HitchBOT, a hitchhiking robot that is entirely dependent on the goodwill of people to see that it travels around safely. It’s programmed to interact socially on a basic level, and it has a “bucket list” of stuff to accomplish along the way. People pick it up, transport it, interact with it, then either hand it off to someone else or leave it in a conspicuous spot for someone else to pick up. It’s a social experiment to “see if robots can trust people”, according to its creators.

Since it was released into the world, HitchBOT has traveled thousands of miles through Canada, the Netherlands and Germany before arriving in the US where it “hoped to make new friends”. Here, it lasted only two weeks before being torn apart in Philadelphia Saturday.

While I recognize that HitchBOT could have met with this fate anywhere, I’m also not in the least bit surprised that it survived the preceding countries and got snuffed here. My guess is that it also wouldn’t have survived long in Russia or Mexico or other places where social order is precarious. But is that really the club we’re in?

And yes, this is trivial compared to the human lives that have been destroyed needlessly. Maybe not unrelated, though.

I’m just interested in your take on what makes some societies better able to support cooperative efforts than others. Why do we suck at this?