I’m saying that it’s a matter of culture, not policy (and certainly not genetics). You can’t replicate it just by cherry picking some of their policies. And it’s very hard to change culture.
The Japanese take pride in infrastructure and development. Americans try to figure out how to abuse environmental laws to keep it from being built. We turn every development project into a civil rights battle or a rural/urban battle. We hate paying for development with visible taxes, but love creating invisible taxes by attaching mandates as riders to projects. “You can build that apartment building, but only if you widen that public road and build a school. You can build fiber there, but only if you also build fiber in this place where it makes no economic sense.” That often makes development unattractive altogether, but that’s okay because we hate development anyway.
The Japanese take pride in infrastructure and development. Americans try to figure out how to abuse environmental laws to keep it from being built. We turn every development project into a civil rights battle or a rural/urban battle. We hate paying for development with visible taxes, but love creating invisible taxes by attaching mandates as riders to projects. “You can build that apartment building, but only if you widen that public road and build a school. You can build fiber there, but only if you also build fiber in this place where it makes no economic sense.” That often makes development unattractive altogether, but that’s okay because we hate development anyway.