[SHOwnsYou]

Unless you were coerced or the contract came into being in some other illegitimate way, you certainly have a moral obligation to fulfill any promise you make, contract or otherwise.

<Quick moral theory> To be moral, an action must preserve agency of those involved. When any action is performed, a reciprocal standard of action is established. (When I do something, I am willing that it is ok for you to do it to me.) If the action in question strips another person of their moral agency, the actor initiating the action is also accepting that it is permissible to be stripped of their own agency. This is where the contradiction exists. If we authorize the removal of anothers agency, then we are authorizing the removal of our own agency as well, and thus our ability to determine morality.

Cliffs Notes: If you screw someone over, you're authorizing others to screw you over. This perverts your sense of morality and you are no longer sufficiently able to decide morality.

[mattm]

> you certainly have a moral obligation to fulfill any promise you make

Morals are not absolute. Trying to apply your own expectations to others has the ability to cause a lot of grief in life.

Having paid off about $35k in student loans 2.5 years after I graduated, I do feel sympathy. It's easy to take on loans when it's just numbers on a piece of paper and one may not have earned much money up until that point. I only realised the hindrance of debt after taking it on. It can be a very tough lesson for people to learn if they have taken on too much and do not have prior experience on which to base their decisions.

[reeses]

There's a big confusion between morals and ethics, and they are often used interchangeably, which is what some of the posts to which you are replying have done.

This is definitely an ethical issue, which is (yes, yes, it's ironic) a cornerstone of Bar admission and the ability to practice law. Many disbarments are the result of ethical misconduct.

As an aside, he would also not be able to get a top secret security clearance, and would also be unlikely to get a secret clearance unless he had particularly amazing skills.