Liberty Student, I think we need to understand that codes of ethics have been specific to a place and time, whether it’s the medieval knight’s chivalry, the Tibetan monk’s hermitude, or otherwise. Do you know that in more destitute times, mere greed was equivalent to rape in magnitude of how wrong it was seen? And it was so, despite the fact that greed by itself is no harm, (although it can translate into an action that harms others).
Let’s be clear that there is absolutely no way - NO WAY - to universalise morality of everyday life. What you are saying is on the basis of the past three decades of humanity or the past three centuries.
We do know that there is a general body of morality of human life, and the very fact that the Ten Commandments say Thou Shalt Not Steal indicates an idea of respect for property, but that was still subject to many other considerations in daily life.
Consider that changes in marriage laws in some European countries happened, because earlier, marriage meant that a man and a woman were one legal entity or were one person. It only reflected the realities of those times that a man and woman always stayed and worked together. Later, people said that if they are one entity, it is a disguise for denying legal personhood to a woman and making a man own everything, thus making a woman a slave. Do we really believe wives of husbands for centuries have been “slaves”?
Even slavery is difficult to define. Do we mean slavery in an Arab sense, where your clothes are used to wipe foodstained hands, where you can be called to provide sexual pleasure to a man anytime he asks, where you can be beaten or killed with no consequence, and where you can be forced to load bricks under a 50 degree celsius heat? Do we mean slavery in the French sense, where some Haitians were still given some decency and upbringing by some masters and were basically working in exchange for food, shelter, and other benefits?
I don’t think it is actually possible to start out in a vacuum, set aside all facts, make pronouncements about what is moral or what is not, and universalise it.