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"We fantasized about telling the VP to stick it and quitting en masse, but we knew it wouldn't change anything. We'd just be replaced by someone that would."

That's a very bad argument. If you guide yourself by that logic then you can't really blame anyone for doing anything, because everything is justified.

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He isn’t applying the logic to everything, he is applying it to one thing.

It’s possible for the argument to be true in this context and false in another context.

so I take it you don't have a mortgage or a family to support?

It is actually possible to be an ethical person and pay the bills, it just takes a bit of effort.

But that is a different argument with a different justification: "we knew it was unethical, but we needed the money (and couldn't really personally afford taking this stance today as we didn't have alternative ethical jobs lined up that could pay as much; <- implied) and so, on the balance, we are OK with our decision" is simply not the same as "someone else would have done it anyway, so we can feel OK that we did it ourselves".

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