Yeah, in my mind fraud is not tied to financial benefit (and I don’t think it is legally either, any kind of personal benefit will suffice). I also think that if the government is asking you as a jew or as a gay person to pay extra taxes or pay other types of fines (as has happened in many jurisdictions, including in the last 50 years), I also think you are justified in lying in response to that, even if it would be for financial gain.
Like, we had sodomy laws in the U.S. until 2003, many of which carried fines (and were enforced within the last 50 years). I feel a bit confused about what you are allowed to do in order to avoid self-incrimination, but it wouldn’t surprise me that much if various people were pushed into various minor forms of fraud in order to avoid those fines and criminal penalties.
Separately, if there are substantial swaths of the population trying to discriminate against jews or gay people economically, I also feel a decent amount of sympathy for people trying to avoid that by lying, even if it is for financial gain (like, if many of the most prominent scholarships to U.S. universities explicitly exempt jewish or gay or black people, as I think wasn’t too uncommon within the last 50 years, then I feel pretty sympathetic to someone lying about their race/sexual-orientation/religion in order to still claim eligibility for those scholarships, though like, I do sure think this case isn’t obvious, and many quite nearby cases feel straightforwardly quite immoral).
Yeah, in my mind fraud is not tied to financial benefit (and I don’t think it is legally either, any kind of personal benefit will suffice). I also think that if the government is asking you as a jew or as a gay person to pay extra taxes or pay other types of fines (as has happened in many jurisdictions, including in the last 50 years), I also think you are justified in lying in response to that, even if it would be for financial gain.
Like, we had sodomy laws in the U.S. until 2003, many of which carried fines (and were enforced within the last 50 years). I feel a bit confused about what you are allowed to do in order to avoid self-incrimination, but it wouldn’t surprise me that much if various people were pushed into various minor forms of fraud in order to avoid those fines and criminal penalties.
Separately, if there are substantial swaths of the population trying to discriminate against jews or gay people economically, I also feel a decent amount of sympathy for people trying to avoid that by lying, even if it is for financial gain (like, if many of the most prominent scholarships to U.S. universities explicitly exempt jewish or gay or black people, as I think wasn’t too uncommon within the last 50 years, then I feel pretty sympathetic to someone lying about their race/sexual-orientation/religion in order to still claim eligibility for those scholarships, though like, I do sure think this case isn’t obvious, and many quite nearby cases feel straightforwardly quite immoral).