Log parsing is an option. There are self hosted options. There are also services like https://simpleanalytics.com/ (I have not used them or know much about them tbh).
Personally, on my recent projects I start without analytics. If I want to measure health or growth, I define my own "metrics" and use sql or logs to generate. I don't need to know what country you are in. I don't need to know what browser you are using. If I do need to know something, I can look at useragents. If it truly is for user benefit and not just my curiosity, I can actually ask my users with a survey.
And if you obfuscate your Matomo client script to get around the user's preference for trackers you're not being very ethical.
I'm not sure I agree, but you made interesting point and I'm glad you brought it up!
Personally, I don't think I would classify that as unethical. Ethics need to be looked at with intent in mind, and if you are comfortable being honest about what you are doing, I _think_ I would be okay with this. Not sure, though–I do have doubt.
Theoretically you could use the same way to feed third-party analytics too though.
Even without cookies and without JS you can still get some data for analytics.