The sheviit year says what we treat as private property is in fact not ours, it is God's. What God grants, He grants not as property but as a trusteeship.
Matters of covenant fall into the category of stewardship. We cannot use what was given to us in trust as if it were our own creation. We may not waste what we’ve received through grace. To violate that trust is to abrogate the covenant with God, which results in the resource curse and the Midas Touch.
The punishment God will meet out to those who abrogate His covenant will be visited on the perpetrators through the villiany of strongmen who would rule through fear and without the niceties of covenantal rights between the rulers and their subjects.
There is the key to Biblical covenant. Abrogate the covenant with God and you will violate the covenant between men. It is not a matter of ethics, it is a matter of reverence.
Reverence requires learning the habits of restraining oneself before a higher authority. Reverence is an understanding that virtue has about it an element of decorum.
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