Op 2005-10-19, Roger Blake schreef <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Antoon Pardon wrote: >> A company figures out something is wrong with one of their new models. >> They have two options. They can repair the problem or they can leave >> it as is and brace the laswsuits that will likely follow. An analysis >> shows that the first option is likely to cost more than the second. > > What you are desribing is the Ford Pinto. (As you may recall, Ford > determined that it would cost less to settle the lawsuits of charbroiled > customers and their families than to fix the poor engineering of the > gas tank on that car.) > >> As far as I understand you, the company should ship the faulty model. > > That is what Ford did for years with the Pinto.
And as far as I understand David Schwartz that was the right decision of Ford. > They failed to take into account that beyond the short-term profit > numbers, there is an effect on the company's reputation and profitibility > when shipping faulty products in a competitive marketplace. Today's > U.S. automakers are still suffering from poor reputations they earned > decades ago. But that is aftersight. If is always possible that you overlooked something in your analisis or that some information is unavailable. So you are forced to take a decision based on the information then available. Whether or not the problem involves ethics in trading doesn't change that. -- Antoon Pardon -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
