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Most woke urban progressives, and probably even most rationalists, are willing and often eager to break laws. For example, there are plenty of members of both groups who break drug laws all the time. And the reason why no woke urban progressive has shot Trump is not that it would have been illegal.
The number of people who are so over-socialized that the notion of disobeying a law does not exist within their philosophy is actually very small, I am sure.
What rationalists and also a large subset of woke urban progressives (especially the affluent ones) tend to be is hyper-cautious, probably cautious to the point that it interferes with quality of life rather than enhances it. Or, to be less charitable, they are cowardly.
They imagine the possible very negative outcomes of breaking the sorts of laws that carry large penalties and think to themselves, "even if me getting caught is very unlikely, when I multiply the possibility of getting caught by the penalty that I would receive, the result is still too large for it to be acceptable to me".
This may well be much more of a "middle class or higher" attitude than a blue tribe attitude.
Based on the 2020 protests/riots/etc. and the distribution of who, back then, most often threatened or actually used violence to achieve their goals, one could argue that it is actually the red tribe that is more overly law-abiding and hyper-cautious than the blue tribe. Think of all the red tribers who both own guns and believe that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump. Almost not a single one has done anything about it. This was true even before the heavy legal outcomes of the January 6 protest/riot/etc. became clear.
An entire nation of them exists. The Germans are real people.
Reoccurring anecdotes about them refusing to disobey even the most obviously miswritten law or mislabeled item, and acting agast or hurt if you suggest they could just ignore it are very common amongst anyone who interacts with them.
Hmm, well I was mainly thinking about Americans. I do not have much experience with Germans. I have heard similar things about the Japanese.
@Southkraut what do you think about this?
tl;dr: More true of Germans than of any other nation I know.
Germans aren't 100% law-abiding, many of them will ignore minor laws when it suits them and they feel they have the moral high ground and they know their social network wouldn't condemn them for it.
Some Germans, get this, are actual honest-to-god criminals. We have them! They break laws and often they get caught and fined or imprisoned for it.
And many are indeed exemplars of the stereotype. It is not without some basis in reality. There are many who will indeed do their utmost to obey every law and regulation, no matter how inane, counterproductive or obviously insane. They are genuinely afraid of going against the letter of the law, not out of fear of punishment, but because it would be against the cosmic order of things.
Some people will even invent new laws on the spot as an excuse to not do something they do not wish to do - it often sounds plausible enough.
We also have tens of millions of foreigners and "Germans" who aren't nearly as lawful, but probably behave more lawfully than they would prefer so as to not stand out too much.
But overall yeah, we make lots of rules and expect them to be obeyed and most of us obey most of the rules and it's serious business all the way down.
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Its really dramatic in German descended parts of rural America and Canada... as the laws are increasingly written with the assumption that no one will obey them and German descended small business people try desperately to comply with impossible contradictory laws.
I wonder what the Germans do about GDPR. That law seems particularly difficult to comply with.
Assiduously fill out a form every time you go to a public event, to the doctor, to a mechanic, to town hall, or generally have any interaction with anyone whatsoever that isn't bedroom-private or plain retail.
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They (and Europe in general) get around it by not having any meaningful tech industry.
My opinion of the European tech industry is also pretty low. Here's an anecdote about Italy. While I was there, I couldn't access ChatGPT without a VPN because it didn't comply with Italian privacy laws.
Meanwhile, because of Italian law, every hotel required that I enter my passport photo, city of birth, and other very personal details into their extremely shittily-designed web portal which I am sure is being hacked regularly. (I did lie when possible)
That's not the fault of the Italian tech industry, that's the fault of Italian regulations.
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Do people drive the speed limit there?
Rather famously, Germany has no speed limit on most of the Autobahn. German law-abidingness is a result of three linked phenomena - people believe the law simply codifies expected pro-social behaviour, people generally choose to behave pro-socially, and the legislators making laws (like speed limits on uncongested freeways) which would undermine the other two.
There's an underrated concept that I heard once about this concept generalized as having to make laws there be "beneath the dignity of the State".
Contrast the law in the neighboring countries and most of the English-speaking world where everyone recognizes that speed limits are not one of those laws that codifies pro-social behavior (because, quite simply, they're set far below the maximum safe speed of the road) and everyone drives 10 over as a consequence. It's almost like respect for the State is a two-way street or something.
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