This. American freight rail is the marvel of the developed world and the envy of Europe: one of the reasons that recent(ish) government proposals for high-speed passenger rail were dangerous. Ask the Brits: http://www.economist.com/node/16636101

You just don't get to see freight rail in action much unless you're a good bit more blue-collar than the typical HN crowd.

envy of Europe? hat's a bit far-fetched, care to give more details? if you mean by any chance super long trains spanning over kilometer, we have those too

There's a cultural difference too, for example in the terms of Hofstede's theory, Switzerland scores highly on pragmatism: http://geert-hofstede.com/switzerland.html

I'm having a bit of trouble thinking that having an amazing freight system in a country as big and with the diversity of production as the US isn't the definition of pragmatism.

Well, Hofstede's pragmatism dimension is something specific. Sometimes he calls it "Long Term Orientation". It was original identified as a dimension on which East Asian countries strongly differed from the west, and one of the first studies referred to it as "Confucian Work Dynamism".

So, if you prefer to think of it as Confucian Work Dynamism, it's no longer tied to the name of a quality the US would naturally consider itself as having.

Hofstede's project is a bit naively empirical and prone to generalizations, but he's trying to talk about something real.

"the long-term pole corresponds to Bond’s Confucian Work Dynamism. Values found at this pole were perseverance, thrift, ordering relationships by status, and having a sense of shame; values at the opposite, short term pole were reciprocating social obligations, respect for tradition, protecting one's 'face', and personal steadiness and stability" from http://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=101...