Most moral wrongs are also social wrongs. Laws and regulations exist for the good of society, and flouting those laws is bad for the public good. If you pay less in taxes than you ought to, that means that the average citizen either pays more in taxes or doesn't get the social services those taxes would have paid for. Insider trading means that the insiders profit at the expense of the outsiders, who are typically far more numerous.
> If you pay less in taxes than you ought to, that means that the average citizen either pays more in taxes or doesn't get the social services those taxes would have paid for.
No, it means SOMEONE is paying more. That someone could be a rich person, another company, or a smorgasbord of other taxpayers. You can't assume it's Joe the Plumber who's paying more taxes (on average, because proportionally, corporations and rich people pay most taxes).
Also, don't assume those taxes would have paid for social services. They could have also been used to kill innocent women and children in unspeakably nasty ways (on average, most of the budget does NOT actually go to social services).
The vast majority of trading is done by institutions, so here again, your assumption that Joe the Plumber gets hurt by the big bad hedge funds doing insider trading is faulty. Yes, 401(k)s might get hit, but it's not your average E*TRADE daytrader who's losing out (again, on average, based on trading volume).
Anyway, in the name of morality, it's irrelevant to speculate WHO pays for your wrongdoing and for WHAT your taxes would have been used.
The action is immoral and illegal. To say it's socially wrong is a big stretch. There are way too many unknowns to make a definitive statement.
