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Comment by eropple | Hacker News Reader

You are right, in the squintiest, most Futurama-technically-correct-is-the-best-kind-of-correct sort of way. But this is Hacker News, where "breaking unjust laws" is used as an excuse to fetishize and drool over companies like Uber, and the connection there is pretty awful. Uber isn't breaking Jim Crow laws by treating its employees--sorry, "contractors"--like garbage or by lying to government officials or by stealing from others.

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HN is hardly a monolith of opinion. You'll find many discussions here with people loudly arguing that Uber is a cancer that deserves to end up a smoking crater as a lesson to others. I will help salt the earth.

That there are bad actors out there, and those who defend them by shouting about bad law, doesn't tell us anything about the justness of law, or the character of people (aside from the shouty ones).

I do believe in a moral good to violate unjust laws. It isn't always worth the tradeoffs, some people have obligations that weigh heavily in the decisions, and there are countless other concerns, but the fact remains, law and morality are at best only vaguely related.

The gap between "No, you should not be breaking the law." and "One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws." is huge and cavernous, but it does exist. That some people or companies will abuse this fact, should not mean that the difference is to be denied or minimized.

On the flip side, I don't feel there's anything wrong with people who use marijuana for recreational purposes, even if it's illegal.

The law is just that, the law, it has nothing to do with what's right or wrong.

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