[etherael]

If you were taken hostage and had access to a teleportation device that would extricate you from the situation, but was extremely difficult to use such that the vast majority of people would be unable to do so, would you be ethically obligated to risk your life making it more easy to use so more people could get out, or negotiate with the hostage takers, rather than just making use of the escape avenue you have clearly available to you?

Why is obeying idiotic unenforceable laws any different to this when it comes to technology, aside from the obvious of the stakes being much lower? Although the way the world is going, that may not be a given in the future.

I'd argue it may even be worse when it comes to cases of governments who are nominally democracies making idiotic laws for their populaces, because at least theoretically, those populaces could have voted in such a way that said idiotic laws would never come to be, and thus their misery, the stupid laws that they're subject to, etc, are somewhat self inflicted, and for those that do dissent it makes even more sense to feel zero obligation to the greater populace given that. I personally don't really buy this because in my experience, what people want in a democracy has very little with what they end up getting, and the same people that will scream blue murder about the right to self rule when it comes to a national group, will scream just as loud when it comes to an individual in the exact opposite direction.