CS109 Spring 2018: Unethically Ethical

                                                                                     (Sriram, Danely, Alvin, Xeon) In 2016, Austin voted 56% to 44% against Proposition 1, which allowed ride-sharing services like Uber and Lyft avoid requiring fingerprint background checks for their drivers and other regulations regarding drop-offs and pick-ups in traffic. Uber and Lyft had spent around $8 million lobbying voters for their support in the vote, so the loss was a big blow. Voters against Proposition 1 believed that it was the company’s responsibility to keep their customers safe. The majority of Austin resident voters decided that they valued their own safety over lower ride fares. Uber and Lyft both warned that they would leave if Proposition 1 wasn’t passed, and that th...

(Sriram, Danely, Alvin, Xeon) A no-poaching agreement, or a no-poach pact, is an agreement between multiple companies to not recruit from each other, and is currently illegal under U.S. antitrust laws. One main issue resulting from no-poach pacts is the decrease in the availability of jobs in the market, giving companies leverage to offer below-market wages and reducing the abilities for workers to collectively bargain. Despite the clear unethicality of the pact, companies discreetly collude, placing workers in a large, unfair disadvantage. In September 2015, U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh ruled that Apple, Google, Intel, and Adobe will pay $415 million to approximately 64,466 workers for their role in creating a no-poach pact “involving senior executives … creating ‘no-poach’ lists” that were “part of a scheme whereby companies agreed not to recruit each others’ employees” (Roberts 1). This unethical act have severely limited the potentials of many of the companies...

(Sriram, Danely, Alvin, Xeon) The Challenger disaster was a catastrophic event that took place in 1986 where the space shuttle Challenger exploded 73 seconds into its flight, killing the seven astronauts on board. While it seemed to be an accident, there was every possibility of preventing it. Boisjoly was one of a group of engineers who warned Morton Thiokol and NASA of the defective o-rings, used in rocket boosters, that were prone to fail in low temperatures. Temperatures fell below freezing the night before, and they ignored his warnings - endangering the lives on the astronauts on board. Both organizations had two conflicts of interest: money and the careers of upper management. In the case of the Challenger disaster, Roger Boisjoly suffered the consequences of compromising those two things because of the bad ethical leadership in place. Both Morton Thiokol and NASA were under the scrutiny of the entire nation, and they felt that they couldn’t afford to call off a sp...