I always love that argument. Because it reminds me when I was 5 and my mom said "Just because everyone else does it doesn't make it right." If your argument is one that a 5 year old is making, you might need to reconsider.
Until we outlaw a way to make money, expecting people to morally not use it to is extremely naive. Something a 5 year old would expect in fact.
There is a reason why we have police, courts and jails after all.
Of course, this works best in an economy where there are a surplus of jobs.
Developers have the power to refuse bad actions, especially like you say in a job-rich environment. But unless software developers experience risk consequences for developing something bad, some number of them will not obey their conscience.
> some number of them will not obey their conscience.
Let's just hope that as time progresses that more will follow their conscience. I honestly think that as our other needs are being taken care of that people are able to act more on their own personal ethics. It is substantially easier to be ethical when you can put food on the table.
I’m still concerned, though... addition to basic security, some people will compromise ethics for status. In particular, an observation JL made in the book is that people staying in the finance industry despite reservations were often parents buying their kids a fancy education.
Abolish Harvard to fix Facebook? Less Eton, more ethics?