That is beside the point, though; I wasn't saying regulations were wrong, just that it is unfair to say "If you don't like this particular regulation than you don't care about customers"
That is wrong. You can disagree with how a regulation is implemented and still agree with the idea of having a regulation.
The Ashley Madison leak has been linked to at least one suicide. But in any case, even if your data can't gravely harm someone by itself, it can when it's linked with other datasets. As the U.S. Privacy Protection Study Commission presciently wrote in their 1977 report,
"The real danger is the gradual erosion of individual liberties through the automation, integration, and interconnection of many small, separate record-keeping systems, each of which alone may seem innocuous, even benevolent, and wholly justifiable."
What happens instead is that you need to be inspected by the government before it's allowed to be occupied or put into use. And if it ever should happen that it does collapse, then the structural engineer who signs off on the plans faces criminal liability particularly in extreme cases (Kansas City Hyatt is the most memorable experience).
Ok, that is just silly. This sounds so much like the 'Why do you want privacy if you have nothing to hide?' arguments. It is very reasonable to both have a company that handle customer data responsibly AND have issues with the GDPR.
Imagine if every time you walked down the street, the police stopped you and made you prove that you hadn't murdered anyone that day. You might get get annoyed at the 10 minutes it takes to prove our innocence. If you complained about the extra time and intrusion, would a fair response be "Every complaint about this check shows you don't care about murder"
No, you can both agree with a goal of a regulation and disagree with the mechanism that they implement it. It is certainly NOT the case that 'the only thing GDPR wants from you is to handle others data with the same RESPECT as you handle yours'... they want you to DEMONSTRATE this in a particular manner. Those particulars are important, and we can disagree on them without it being some sort of moral conflict.