Crito

In Crito Socrates makes the argument that because he had enjoyed the citizenship of Athens for 70 years and all the benefits that came with it, he could not now, disobey its laws, since to disobey one law is to disobey the entire body of laws and to disobey the entire body of laws is to destroy the city.

This argument rests on the idea that injustice cannot be met with injustice (and that to now disobey the law of the city he had gained benefit from would be injustice.) But if the law itself is unjust and one still obtains benefit, for example if one is a slaveowner, or if one is the son of a fascist dictator, or if one is the relative of a corrupt politician, is it then sill injustice to disobey the law if one believes that the law is unjust?

I read Plato as an elaborate joke.
Socrates' conclusions, while not absurd to our ears, was patently absurd to Plato.

The trick with Socrates is to try and find the absurdity in the structure of the rhetoric of logic and the representation of his reality by assuming his conclusions to be the result of stupidity.

Then you can see the spirality of the recursion in the narrative process, and the rhetoric in the dialectic structure of arguments in general.

The only thing that matters is if the story is useful to be believed, and there is nothing useful to be believed in suicide.

Socrates doesn't commit suicide; he is ordered to kill himself. Extremely different.

Crito is a text on the importance of Rule of Law, not turning the other cheek.

You can't selectively obey the laws. Either you're a destructive freeloader or a contributing member of the polity. The polity is a collective good, and its not up to individual citizens to act on their conscience to make it better. Changing things requires a manifestation of mutual assent, which (given social contract theory) can be decided upon the people (in a Democracy) or mandated (in a hierarchical system).

>and one still obtains benefit, for example if one is a slaveowner, or if one is the son of a fascist dictator, or if one is the relative of a corrupt politician,

Maybe I'm not understanding your point, I am a bit buzzed, but how would this change Socrates' arguments or position?

Well that's certainly a perspective I've never considered. But even Socrates wasn't convinced of his argument, he actually asks Crito if the argument is sufficient and Crito says yes.

Which doesn't make sense, because if anything, it's not Crito that Socrates should be trying to convince, but himself. Which means he must've had some other more potent justification for his actions, which perhaps would not have convinced Crito but did convince himself, or alternatively, as you suggest, he was just a fool.

But reading Crito I get the sense that's almost advocating facism but from the perspective of the one who holds power, in which the law holds precedence over all so long as its environment provides benefit.

A modern example of this would be Snowden. He was a clear beneficiary of the US government, yet chose to disobey its laws and leak sensitive information. Yet that information showed clear injustice to the American people.

So what is justice if not the body of laws? I'm reminded of "does not even the tax collector do so?", due to the benefit-obedience trade. If Socrates really believed that, then his virtue is false isn't it?

Eat shit. Dead is Dead, and the joke of the Sophistry of sematics like this is exactly what he was laughing at.
You think there is a division between the story of reality and stories that are not real solely based on whether those stories of reality are useful to be believed, but you could not know them as anything but a story of randomness without the story. An amoeba that avoids light has a story. If it did not, then light and dark would have no distinguishing features. Just because the amoeba has not story of the story doesn’t mean he doesn’t have a story. Also, just because the story is useful to be believed doesn’t make it any less a story, and just because it is a story doesn’t mean it isn’t useful to be believed.
The brain is a sense organ that sense itself, then senses itself sensing itself. The story is the sense of the sense of itself. Without the story, there would be nothing to break the chain to make the sense anything more than randomness.
This is the recursion, and it makes our entire representation (not simulation) of our universe. But it is not up to our senses to determine what is useful, and at the same time we can never know what is real.
Plato and the Sophists both make this mistake of thinking that reality is anything but a story just because it can be useful to be believed. But Plato is so over the top about describing the “metaphysics” that he just must be kidding. I look at all of Plato’s writings as an elaborate farce that is making fun of the Sophists whose rhetoric of ethos and pathos was so obviously an appeal to our hardwiring (a term Plato would not have) that Plato just made up a bunch of Sophistic logos situations (the allegory of the cave, the Meno) that you just had to laugh.
Either that or he was an idiot that sparked the stupidity of the entire planet.

That is in effect what I'm asking. Would it change his argument or position or not?

Hmm, but by that argument, isn't Socrates a destructive freeloader? At least according to the judgement of the people. And if not, then who determines whether one is a destructive freeloader or not?

I do.
One is a destructive freeloader if they do not work to benefit myself and others who benefit me.

Oh, then no, absolutely not. The law is to be respected, regardless if one is benefiting or disadvantaged by it.

However, this only applies if the benefit is mandated by the laws. In your examples, the virtuous person ("the important thing isn't to live but to live-well") wouldn't abuse political access and the like.