“The Moral Law causes the people to be in complete accord with their ruler, so that they will follow him regardless of their lives.”
People sustain sacrifice only when they believe in the cause; shared conviction beats coercion every time.
The first of the five constant factors gets defined immediately, and it is telling that Sun Tzu starts there — before terrain, before generals, before logistics. Moral Law (道) is accord: the people in complete agreement with their ruler, following regardless of their lives. In a book famous for cunning, the foundational factor is the least cunning thing imaginable — genuine shared purpose.
Two teams hit the same crisis: a nine-month delay, pay frozen, a rival poaching. One team’s people were bought with salary and stay Bought — they update their résumés. The other had spent two years explaining why the work mattered, in the founder’s own words, weekly — and half the team rides out the delay on reduced pay. Nothing in the second team’s spreadsheet explains this. 道 does.
Alignment is not enthusiasm, and it cannot be manufactured at the moment it is needed — that is morale theater, and everyone can tell. Moral Law is the slow accumulation of honest answers to "why are we doing this?" A leader who never gave the reason cannot invoke the reason later; the accord was never built.