Dozens of cars stop at a red light, yet someone thinks they can cross because everybody else is stopping. Hundreds of companies take great pains to follow mandated regulation, but one CEO thinks those rules are nonsense and fucks up the marketplace for everyone in the industry, including themselves, only for a shot at personal wealth. Six roommates each agree to split chores, but one lazy bastard evades any sense of responsibility. Software project contributors all follow the same coding style and review process, except the one who really needs to get a patch in RIGHT NOW because it's so important for whatever reason.
The thing is that if there are rules, they were made for a reason. In many cases, the underlying pattern has something to do with us being able to get along with each other instead of ending up at each others' throats, or having our economy implode, or losing innocent people to accidents or poverty. Common standards allow us to work together efficiently. When we can rely on each other, we can do more with less effort. That's just as important in traffic management as it is in hiring or relationships.
When groups are small, it's easier to agree on rules and values. With larger groups, communities, states and whatnot, you'll have someone who doesn't mind wrecking it for everyone else just so they can get ahead. The solution is not to nod and say yeah, that's okay. It's not okay to cross red lights. It's not okay to kill people and take their money. It's not okay to steal someone else's confidential property and use it to destroy your competitor in the marketplace. We shouldn't accept any of these just because they're "the human condition". We should police our standards and improve on those failings so we can maintain a workable system.
Some rules are not great. That's a fact, and that need to be improved. But the sustainable solution is not to bend the rule. It's to change the rules so they work well in more cases, for more people, with better overall outcomes. And then everyone follows the new rules. Fuck everyone who thinks they're above the rest of us and use others' "weakness" of caring about the common benefit to reap rewards just for themselves, without making the system sustainably better for all parties involved.
I'd rather have a highway like the ones in Germany than the chaos that you see on a wide street in India. Both systems work, but one works better than the other because people agree that by not bending the rules to your own personal advantage, I can get a better outcome for everyone including myself.
And to get back to your actual, much tamer example of bending the rules - in many cases the outcome is alright, but the principle still stands. I shouldn't have to call my bank to get a better interest rate. I shouldn't have to be personable and accommodating just so I can ask for something obvious like getting half an hour off for a doctor's appointment. Things like that should be available to everyone, regardless of their social aptitude. So let's make sure we have rules in place to make that the "rule", not the exception.
