I think it would make more sense, and also be more ethical, for Ring to always record, and for those who don’t have a membership if they need to access recordings, they simply have to pay for access.
Not everyone can afford monthly memberships for everything out there, but certainly, if something bad happens to someone, I’m sure they could figure out a way to get the money to pay for the footage.
Quite a stretch to say this is somehow “ethical”. Just sounds like you don’t want to pay a monthly/yearly fee for the advanced features. It costs money to store video and have staff to perform maintenance and other tasks on just the servers alone.
Ring offers a free tier, if you want more be willing to pay a minimal charge for it.
I’m not fan of subscriptions either, but I make sure to keep mine to a minimum on my own.