Its only unethical if your country happens to be on the "war on drugs" bandwagon. People smuggle bibles into North Korea with great ingenuity. It's only unethical if you happen to be North Korean. Otherwise it's missionary work.
> What's the ethical breach in using technology to route around bad laws?
The fact that individuals decide on their own which are "bad laws", but without going to the trouble to defeat them in court. If a law is defeated in court, this remains a country of laws, not people. But if people decide on their own which laws to obey, it becomes thinly disguised anarchy.
Yeah, that sounds pretty horrible to me. Personally, I like people a lot more than I like laws.
it becomes thinly disguised anarchy.
Works for me. But, I believe in the sovereignty of the individual, and attribute no particular special status to "government" and "laws", so maybe I'm coming at this from a different angle.
> Yeah, that sounds pretty horrible to me. Personally, I like people a lot more than I like laws.
You really missed the point of that aphorism -- it's meant to elevate shared values over individual values when dealing with other people. Imagine a community with ten members, nine of whom believe that stealing is wrong, one who believes stealing is right. Either the community becomes hostage to the one thief, or it makes a rule against stealing that everyone must obey. Obviously the second approach is best, and at that point the community becomes one ruled by laws, not people.
>> it becomes thinly disguised anarchy.
> Works for me. But, I believe in the sovereignty of the individual, and attribute no particular special status to "government" and "laws" ...
Yes. You're an anarchist. For me, the existence of governments and laws is the lesser of two evils. The alternative is no governments and laws, but the same number of people, i.e. the fascism of unchecked individuality.
I wasn't thinking about these particular laws, I was responding to the parent's comment about ethics being less interesting than hard problems.
I just think that "oh, this looks fun!" shouldn't always trump "is this the right thing to do?", that's all. You'll get no argument on the drug war from me.
