One can, and one should, but we as a society have a vested interest in providing incentives to make doing the right thing easier than doing the wrong one.
I've criticized the abrogation of responsibility elsewhere in this thread, I'm not giving anybody a pass or an excuse, but the reality of the cowardice of normal people necessitates that we provide some measure of cover for the people unwilling to risk their necks.
I agree with you both. "One can, and one should," and it’s even better if the profession provides a mechanism to remove from practice its own worst offenders. The AMA/ABA examples I gave above do not just offer protection to their members, but they also hold power to send their unethical practitioners to the poorhouse. (If you’re a junior physician with lots of student loans but lose your license due to an ethics violation, I don’t know what you’ll do. Loans don’t go away in a bankruptcy.) So those professions come with a terrible downside for flagrant violators. We don’t have any such downside in software, which may explain some of the moral depravity mentioned.
I've criticized the abrogation of responsibility elsewhere in this thread, I'm not giving anybody a pass or an excuse, but the reality of the cowardice of normal people necessitates that we provide some measure of cover for the people unwilling to risk their necks.