I'm not excusing it, I'm only being pragmatic. It's well and good to push people to be more ethical, but relying on that trait is a separate question.

The human conscience doesn't do very well with abstractions. The further removed someone's actions are from the damage caused down the line, the weaker that moral signal gets. If we want to improve our society, we have to be realistic about these things and design our institutions to buttress against them.

Certainly, but shaming and shunning are interpreted by the human conscience as damage in very real ways. You're not wrong, but I think modern sensibility has such an adverse reaction to using shame as a deterrent that we refuse to call things out as shameful.

Sure, it only works if the people in question care about your opinion, but building consensus on what acts should be shunned only takes about a generation and a half. Segregation, dog fighting, the list is long. If we really think this is bad for society (and I do) then shrugging and talking about incentives isn't the way forward. Especially in the absence of a mechanic to actually change those incentives.

We absolutely rely on people to act ethically even with incentive systems. Every incentive system is prone to abuse. Also, people are motivated by different incentives. These often boil down to their own ethical/moral values.

>But I wonder at what point you have to draw the line and quit excusing any and all behavior as the result of misaligned incentives, and simply hold people morally and ethically accountable for the choices they make?

Your statement is contradictory, incentives are what hold people accountable.