As long as nobody gets hurt and it's within the rules yes, it's a cutthroat world from every aspect, most successful people have a ruthless streak.
So if I write a rule or law that is unethical, and use that to the detriment of others, this is all justifiable so long as there is no perceived harm caused to the victim of my actions?
We're back to the Jim Crow thing where laws were written specifically to exclude black people from participating in society, and helped to enforce segregation of white and black people well into 1960s America. If you were to ask any supporter of Jim Crow at that time period, they'd tell you that the blacks weren't being hurt as they still had schools, bathrooms, the ability to ride a bus, etc. True that they may not have always been physically hurt, but the emotional/mental hurt from such experiences is quite real as it relates to sense of self-worth...or rather the extinguishing of self-worth due to being treated as lesser than human.
The brokered deal between Ezpeleta and Bridgestone to allow Rossi to participate in the 2008 season with Bridgestone while the other factory Yamaha had to use Michelin, hurt Casey Stoner/Ducati significantly as Bridgestone now had to widen the operating parameters of their tire since the 2008 M1 was already designed and tested at that point. Widening the operating parameters of the tires to include a LONE factory M1 served to dilute the characteristics of the tire in an effort to appease Valentino Rossi. Think about it for a moment, Bridgestone could have dared to design the tires solely around the GP08, but Rossi would have thrown a ....-fit if he thought the tires were not suiting him, and would have been telling Carmelo that Bridgestone was trying to .... him over. Carmelo would have sided with him and told Bridgestone in no uncertain terms to fix the tires, and that would not be a reach since he was willing to broker an insane deal for Rossi's benefit.
Now if you are Casey Stoner and Ducati in 2008, imagine how devastating it had to be to see all of the hard work you've done with Bridgestone over the past several seasons be completely undermined because one rider with a direct pipeline to Ezpeleta was given better tires for free! Casey in particular was livid when Toni Elias would latch on to him to try and find the best lines around the circuit, and to draft him to better times. He was not happy because he said that he did all of his work on setup and lines himself, and then to have someone freeloading off of all of the time and work was complete ......... He's a guy who is very much a believer of doing the work yourself to improve rather than leach off of the work of others. Rossi was looking to leach off of the work of others by demanding he be granted use of the Bridgestone tires.
Sure it might have been in the rules that such a switch was okay, but it was neither ethical, nor was it free of causing injury to the party of Stoner/Ducati. By your own definition of what is acceptable, it was not acceptable because a party was in fact hurt by the entire incident.
