One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that "an unjust law is no law at all."
These are the folks who led the Revolution. These were not the downtrodden. These were not the oppressed. These were people who stood to lose huge amounts of wealth because of the King's policies. And so they fought a Revolution. Which was, by the way, not very popular. Sixty percent of the colonists either were neutral or opposed to the Revolution.
The parent doesn't appear to be suggesting that people of a certain economic class should not be allowed to fight unjust laws. Rather they appear to be countering the popular narrative that the American revolution was necessarily populist, or popular, and by extent, that all civil disobedience is necessarily justifiable.
This is an important distinction to make when one is attempting to argue from authority, and the simple list of Wikipedia pages you linked to above is a weak argument from authority. Without an accurate portrayal of what that authority was, what its goals were, and what it actually believed, one cannot make a good faith argument.
One example being Benjamin Franklin's often cited quote about those who give up liberty for the sake of security deserving neither. This is often invoked as a warning about the inherent harm of trusting the state, when in fact Franklin was arguing (in a very specific context regarding taxes to fund a defense against Native American raids on the frontier) against the "security" of personal defense versus the "liberty" provided by the state. While the core argument being made in the fundamentally modern reinterpretation of Franklin's words may be legitimate, one cannot ascribe that intent to Franklin's words without engaging in revisionist history.
To use the American civil rights movement as an example, both sides considered themselves just, and considered the laws they disagreed with to be unjust. It cannot be the case that any law considered unjust by any party is equal to any other in the degree of its injustice, otherwise one could argue that those who considered laws against segregation to be unjust were morally equal, and equally justified, in their opposition as those who fought for segregation's end.
What one considers to be unjust, and why one opposes that injustice, should be relevant to the conversation.
You are right, in the squintiest, most Futurama-technically-correct-is-the-best-kind-of-correct sort of way. But this is Hacker News, where "breaking unjust laws" is used as an excuse to fetishize and drool over companies like Uber, and the connection there is pretty awful. Uber isn't breaking Jim Crow laws by treating its employees--sorry, "contractors"--like garbage or by lying to government officials or by stealing from others.
HN is hardly a monolith of opinion. You'll find many discussions here with people loudly arguing that Uber is a cancer that deserves to end up a smoking crater as a lesson to others. I will help salt the earth.
That there are bad actors out there, and those who defend them by shouting about bad law, doesn't tell us anything about the justness of law, or the character of people (aside from the shouty ones).
I do believe in a moral good to violate unjust laws. It isn't always worth the tradeoffs, some people have obligations that weigh heavily in the decisions, and there are countless other concerns, but the fact remains, law and morality are at best only vaguely related.
The gap between "No, you should not be breaking the law." and "One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws." is huge and cavernous, but it does exist. That some people or companies will abuse this fact, should not mean that the difference is to be denied or minimized.
Of course you should. I believe everyone should break at least one law a day. Thankfully, (or not) there are so many laws, so many of them so non-intuitive and/or contradictory, that it's almost certain that each and every one of us does break at least one law a day.
Personally I'm with Bastiat on this:
If every person has the right to defend even by force — his person, his liberty, and his property, then it follows that a group of men have the right to organize and support a common force to protect these rights constantly. Thus the principle of collective right — its reason for existing, its lawfulness — is based on individual right. And the common force that protects this collective right cannot logically have any other purpose or any other mission than that for which it acts as a substitute. Thus, since an individual cannot lawfully use force against the person, liberty, or property of another individual, then the common force — for the same reason — cannot lawfully be used to destroy the person, liberty, or property of individuals or groups.
How much of what passes for "law" these days fits those parameters? I say "not much".
