Ethics are not has-beens nor are they dead.
There may be "laws" and lawmakers may be power-and-control fanatics and average citizens may be anarchists, but that still doesn't mean the concept of what is right and what is wrong no longer exists.

It may seem ethics no longer exist, but that's only because modern society disavows (or circumvents) them.
But such undermining doesn't necessarily mean they've been done in.  It only means society refuses to acknowledge such concepts are still around and still valid.