The TV license is silly but the detector van situation is bogus, at least in the present day; really they just blanket mail demand letters to every address in the database on the assumption that everyone watches TV.

> Europeans absolutely want to do it by the book

Again on HN, I don't think conflating Europe and all Europeans into a uniform culture works. This might be true of Germany but as you get further from Berlin it is .. less so.

(Famous story from the Greek debt crisis of using satellite photos to find swimming pools and therefore people who were probably underpaying income tax, which was at such poor compliance levels the state was struggling)

Perhaps one explanation is personal bankruptcy? At least in Scandinavia/Finland this is an unknown concept. You mess up your business (Ireland has EPR fines upto 500ke) and end up paying company loans for the rest of your life.

I don't really have this experience. A lot of business I have worked with followed the "let's just do it and figure out the risk later" approach. In highly regulated environment it was different, but then looking for ways to squirt around the rules was the game. See for example the CumCum (don't blame me, it was called like that) tax-evasion scheme put in place by french banks.

Depends on what Europe you mean. Europe can be quite different depending on where you are. I wouldn't say northern Europe wants to do it by the book all the time like the Germans.

Quite common to view Europe as all the same, but Europe varies much more than what US does.

Most people are under the impression that those triangulating trucks can't detect anything and they're just an obvious looking enforcement truck used as a scare tactic, is that not the case?

Do regular tv’s transmit?

I find this hard to discuss among others as it often results in heated discussions, but in my experience, Europeans have a completely different understanding of what is considered "rude" so much that I struggle to work with a vast majority of them.

That's not to say that there aren't extremely nice people all other Europe... there are. But I'm still caught off guard when hearing them say some things nonchalantly that would get them fired in the US.