But following the law is itself a load bearing aspect of the social contract. Violating building codes, for example, might not cause immediate harm if it's competent but unusual, yet it's important that people follow it just because you don't want arbitrariness in matters of safety. The objective ruleset itself is a value beyond the rules themselves, if the rules are sensible and in accordance with deeper values, which of course they sometimes aren't, in which case we value civil disobedience and activism.

Also, while laws ideally are inspired by an ethical social contract, the codification proces is long, complex and far from perfect. And then for rules concerning permissible behavior even in the best of cases, it's enforced extremely sparingly simply because it's not possible nor desirable to detect and deal with all infractions. Nor is it applied blindly and equally. As actually applied, a law is definitely not even close to some ethical ideal; sometimes it's outright opposed to it, even.

Law and ethics are barely related, in practice.

For example in the vehicle emissions context, it's worth noting that even well before VW was caught the actions of likely all carmakers affected by the regulations (not necessarily to the same extent) were clearly unethical. The rules had been subject to intense clearly unethical lobbying for years, and so even the legal lab results bore little resemblance to practical on-the-road results though systematic (yet legal) abuse. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that even what was measured intentionally diverged from what is harmfully in a profitable way. It's a good thing VW was made an example of - but clearly it's not like that resolved the general problem of harmful vehicle emissions. Optimistically, it might have signaled to the rest of the industry and VW in particular to stretch the rules less in the future.

>I doubt you're ambivalent about a behavior right until the moment it becomes illegal, after which you think it unethical.

There are many cases where I think that. Examples:

* Underage drinking. If it's legal for someone to drink, I think it's in general ethical. If it's illegal, I think it's in general unethical.

* Tax avoidance strategies. If the IRS says a strategy is allowed, I think it's ethical. If the IRS says a strategy is not allowed, I think it's unethical.

* Right on red. If the government says right on red is allowed, I think it's ethical. If the government (e.g. NYC) says right on red is not allowed, I think it's unethical.

The VW case was emissions regulations. I think they have an ethical obligation to obey emissions regulations. In the absence of regulations, it's not an obvious ethical problem to prioritize fuel efficiency instead of emissions (that's I believe what VW was doing).

Drinking and right turns are unethical if they’re negligent. They’re not unethical if they’re not negligent. The government is trying to reduce negligence by enacting preventative measures to stop ALL right turns and ALL drinking in certain contexts that are more likely to yield negligence, or where the negligence world be particularly harmful, but that doesn’t change whether or not the behavior itself is negligent.

You might consider disregarding the government’s preventative measures unethical, and doing those things might be the way someone disregards the governments protective guidelines, but that doesn’t make those actions unethical any more than governments explicitly legalizing something makes it ethical.

To use a clearer example, the ethicality of abortion— regardless of what you think of it— is not changed by its legal status. You might consider violating the law unethical, so breaking abortion laws would constitute the same ethical violation as underage drinking, but those laws don’t change the ethics of abortion itself. People who consider it unethical still consider it unethical where it’s legal, and those that consider it ethical still consider it ethical where it’s not legal.

I agree if they're negligent they're unethical. But I also think if they're illegal they're generally unethical. In situations where some other right is more important that the law, underage drinking or illegal right on red would be ethical, such as if alcohol is needed as an emergency pain reliever, or a small amount for religious worship, or if you need to drive to the hospital fast in an emergency.

Abortion opponents view it as killing an innocent person. So that's unethical regardless of whether it's legal. I'm not contesting in any way that legal things can be unethical. Abortion supporters view it as a human right, and that right is more important than the law.

Right on red, underage drinking, and increasing car emissions aren't human rights. So outside of extenuating circumstances, if they're illegal, I see them as unethical.

It's not so simple. An analogy is the Rust formatter that has no options so everyone just uses the same style. It's minimally "unethical" to use idiosyncratic Rust style just because it goes against the convention so people will wonder why you're so special, etc.

If the rules themselves are bad and go against deeper morality, then it's a different situation; violating laws out of civil disobedience, emergent need, or with a principled stance is different from wanton, arbitrary, selfish cheating.

If a law is particularly unjust, violating the law might itself be virtuous. If the law is adequate and sensible, violating it is usually wrong even if the violating action could be legal in another sensible jurisdiction.

the right on red example is interesting because in that case, the law changes how other drivers and pedestrians will behave in ways that make it pretty much always unsafe

That just changes the parameters of negligence. On a country road in the middle of a bunch of farm land where you can see for miles, it doesn’t change a thing.

> but that doesn’t make those actions unethical any more than governments explicitly legalizing something makes it ethical

That is, sometimes, sufficient.

If government says ‘seller of a house must disclose issues’ then I rely rely on the law being followed, if you sell and leave the country, you have defrauded me.

However if I live in a ‘buyer beware’ jurisdiction, then I know I cannot trust the seller and I hire a surveyor and take insurance.

There is a degree of setting expectations- if there is a rule, even if it’s a terrible rule, I as individual can at least take some countermeasures.

You can’t take countermeasures against all forms of illegal behaviour, because there is infinite number of them. And a truly insane person is unpredictable at all.

Outsourcing your morality to politicians past and present is not a particularly useful framework.

Ethics are only morality if you spend your entire time in human social contexts. Otherwise morality is a bit larger, and ethics are a special case of group recognized good and bad behaviors.

Lawful good. Or perhaps even lawful neutral?

What if I make sure to have a drink once a week for the summer with my 18 year old before they go to college because I want them to understand what it's like before they go binge with friends? Is that not ethical?

Speeding to the hospital in an emergency? Lying to Nazis to save a Jew?

Law and ethics are more correlated than some are saying here, but the map is not the territory, and it never will be.