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Following legal obligations is an important part of ethics. The law has also the purpose to relieving the individual of the burden of complex ethical considerations. This is the general situation, especially in a democracy under the rule of law.

There are, of course, exceptions and disagreement about specific regulations. But as long as you have the law on your side is a very strong indicator that what you are doing is also ethical more or less okay. It is very hard to say that one person is far off ethically, if two people agreed on something and the terms of their agreement are without doubt legally correct.





Most systemic evil in the modern world is done legally, IMO. There is everything legal but nothing ethical about the way John Deere screws farmers over, how big tech sells your data, how Amazon creates a consumerist race to the bottom, how United Healthcare denies you coverage capriciously, etc.

I appreciate your viewpoint, even though mine is the exact opposite!



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