>Just try crossing the road against the red man......"rules are rules", to the nth degree
Meh, that's just a rule OCD public façade since people are watching and so kids don't learn bad habits and get killed by cars, but privately many Germans are more than willing to break rules if it benefits them and nobody is looking and won't find out about it, just that they don't openly talk about such things since the Germans are super private about their personal affairs and finances, and you also won't hear about such things if you only hang abound in bubbles of SW devs and other repeople with corporate jobs in big cities.
My favorite is them not paying taxes on cash earnings. Cash is king for a reason in Germany: many small businesses, self employed or side hustles love doing business in cash since they can dodge the tax man and pad their incomes with untaxed earnings.
Please tell them that "rules are rules" when it comes to paying their taxes on cash earnings and they'll tell you to shut up and piss off because "everyone is doing it" and "it's always been like that".
It's so true. When I'm in Germany with my wife, I like to take her to restaurants and ask for a real bill at the end (not hand-scribbled on a piece of paper) because I want to pay by card. My wife gets annoyed because this pretty much guarantees we'll stay there another 20 minutes while the staff pretends to mishear, then the internet is down, then the terminal doesnt work, "but are you sure you dont have cash", etc etc. It's hilarious and never gets old, still happens in 2023 right in the center of Munich.
You can have data privacy without normalizing tax fraud, except in Germany one is used as an excuse for the other which is unfair to those who can't dodge taxes and have to carry the burden of financing the government costs for everyone else.
Financial transparency is a big thing in Scandinavian countries where cash is basically non existent and you can view the tax returns of others, and they still have GDPR and no tyranny while having low corruption and high government transparency. It's the sign of a fair and high trust society.
And, I agree of course, the rich have a better system.