nske

Sure, and they wouldn't be wrong to do so, just like they're not wrong now. We can't admit that on one hand we need something because there is no viable replacement and on the other consider that those that choose to work on that make a morally questionable choice.

I don't think anyone except the most hardcore climate activists would be willing to accept that cost, so I don't think it's consistent for anyone except these to judge negatively people who choose to work in this industry. This doesn't change that we as consumers should try and use as little fuel as possible, opt for renewables where possible etc., that's the only way to guide the change. If we do that, the market will take care of the rest as the conditions allow it.

That leaves ambiguous situations where for example there is an order saying "get satellite data from that location". In this case, if the data end up used for something unlawful, I think the responsibility doesn't lie with the soldiers at the bottom of the chain, no.

Now for the case that best serves your comparison, generally serving in an army that very clearly wages a war of aggression. In this case yes I think soldiers carry the responsibility to not help in any way (which realistically would mean stop being soldiers). The difference in this case is that we can't compare an army waging an aggressive war, which is as clear an evil as we can imagine and is in fact considered a crime internationally, with a company that analyses data collected by consent, where the question is whether the mechanism for obtaining consent is good enough or not.

Wouldn't you agree for example that collecting and analysing user data for purposes of displaying relevant advertisements doesn't have to be dishonest, if the users consented to it? Maybe then the problem becomes that some methods of obtaining user consent are not honest -which would mean that there could be methods that are honest, and companies that can follow them.

And if the subject is so nuanced then maybe it's not fair to say that an employee that simply wants to work in their domain of expertise doesn't do honest work, just for failing to set more strict standards than the law with regards to their employer's activities.

The only rational argument for these laws would be the burden on the national-health system for injuries sustained on the head during riding a bike. This could be solved by allowing people to opt-out of the free national health system coverage explicitly in these instances of injuries, if indeed statistics show that there is a significant burden imposed on it. And still there is the counter-argument that this would be biased -what about people who are engaging into leisure activities with higher-risk, "extreme-sports" and such. I wouldn't be surprised if even the cost of treating normal sports-related injuries is higher than the cost of head-related injuries of bikers riding with no helmet. Why not enforce wearing full protective gear when engaging in every sport?

If we start with this mentality, it's only a slippery slope that would lead us in a place we don't want to be.

Same as with smoking taxes. It started with the justification that it's fair to counteract the increased cost that smokers have on the national health system. A perfectly fair reasoning. But by now these taxes have increased so much that this justification is no longer convincing -instead they are widely accepted as a sort of "luxury tax" that smokers pay, no longer to cover the cost of the medical treatment they are more likely to receive on average, but just "because that's how it is". This income is not even earmarked for the health system in many cases. They also started covering things that evidence don't support they pose any or as much of a risk as cigarette smoking (Vaping), and in some cases -Italy, IIRC-, even with official lawmaker justification that these products deprive the state from tax income that they would receive through the smoking tax. A completely illogical argument that I was surprised to see it made nobody blink twice.

So I think such laws are really a demonstration of government acting as a for-profit entity, squeezing money from whatever they think they can get away with.