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Ackerman
Associates
On Retainer from ALLIED INDUSTRIES
Your company represents Allied Industries, a huge
multi-national. They have spent several billion dollars on the
development of a product called the Quadro. Allied feels that they have
a winner on their hands. This is a whole new sort of machine and
everything about it is new and untried. One reason the project has gone
smoothly has been that there is no outstanding regulation or laws to
inhibit the development of the "Human Enhancer".
Recently, the Friends of Europe ,
an ecological organization, has brought a class action suit against the
Quadro: claiming that it is too dangerous to people and the environment
to be used.
The Pluses:
Marketing
studies show that the Quadro is incredibly popular with the general
public. It is considered sexy, luxurious, and will become essential for
modern every day life. If the results are true, the Quadro will improve
job flexibility, quality
of life, and save quite a bit of time for leisure for the general
populace.
Multi tasking on the job (allowing one person to do the work of many is
inherent
in the "human enhancer".)
The manufacture of the Quadro for the near future will be
exclusively in France: this represents millions of jobs, not only the
factory workers, but those that will build the factories, store outlets
etc.
Quadro will represent quite a boon in the export market.
Unfortunately, its development was shared by many companies and thus
the copyrights and patents allow for many competitors from around the
world. As
soon as the secret is out France
will not have a monopoly on the Quadro.
Quadro will entail the
construction of an enormous infrastructure. Projected employment of
just the infrastructure and its maintenance is one out of five people
in France. The jobs will be relatively well paying and literacy
is not required. This represents a great advantage to the French
government since the numbers of the unemployed or the
unemployable are increasingly illiterate. Combined with the production
workers Quadro will produce an increase
of 25% in the workforce!
Quadro is less polluting
than existing alternative technological solutions. Certainly, Research
and
development expects to reduce pollution over time.
Sociological Studies
even indicate that the implementation of Quadro will tend
to insure democracy in countries that adopt its use perhaps because of
its distributed nature similar to the Internet, allowing for more
exchanges of ideas and goods.
The Minuses
As mentioned before, the Quadro does pollute. Its
effectuation will cause some environmental damage but this is minor
compared
to the benefits it brings to society. Eventually, R&D will be able
to
handle this or reduce pollution significantly. Remember even the
computer
industry is an enormous producer of toxic waste water. They like Allied
will
seek out ways to reduce waste and pollution: this policy makes good
business
sense.
Quadro is slightly dangerous to use. There is no
way to make it completely safe. Our engineers will work diligently to
make
the Quadro as safe as it possibly can be, but with 40 million projected
users
in France alone, a very small percentage of the populace will be hurt
or
killed with Quadro's use. Allied Industries believes that the number of
injured or killed can be reduce with proper training. No matter what
Allied
Industries does users, impaired with alcohol or drugs can inflect
damage
upon themselves with a Quadro. There is no
conceivable
way to prevent this. More or less the same
percentage will
be
in effect in the United States when Quadro use is fully implemented
there.
Even though rules of use and social customs will not be the same.
What
safety entails:
Put yourself in the company's shoes : how would you make a skate board
perfectly safe?
Moreover, studies show that in the US, in States that have adopted
mandatory helmet laws for bicyclists: bicycle use among young people
has dropped dramatically. Does society want a sedentary populace?
Protect our children from healthy exercise so that they can begin to
die from heart disease at earlier ages?
Those young adults that do wear helmets, knee and elbow pads are far
more likely to suffer broken bones or even more serious accidents then
those that wear no protection. Because they dare to compete in extreme
sports.
Another
example of the secondary effects of safety equipment is aptly
demonstrated in the ski industry. Forty years ago, with wooden skis and
leather boots the most common injury was a twisted or sprained ankle.
Todays modern composite materials and high tech ski boots make that
injury a thing of the past. But, you are far more likely to die on the
slopes today then back then. Plus, while perhaps the overall number of
accidents has declined you are far more likely to damage your knees, or
break your bones which are a far more severe injuries than simple
sprains.
Market opinion polls show that even when presented with the
existing dangers over 99% of the populace will choose the Quadro over
age old technology. Don't the people
have the right to decide? This is like implementing the
prohibition of alcohol because less than one percent of the populace
wishes it so.
As to the infrastructure needed for Quadro to
fully function, Allied believes that it would be best if national,
state, and regional governments funded the construction. But, Allied
does not rule out private investors fabricating whole sectors and then
taxing users. Connecting every home to the Quadro infrastructure is a
momentous task and can not
be undertaken by any one company, even one as large as Allied
Industries.
Your Objectives:
This is a multi-billion dollar project. Your
client expects results. Your reputation is riding on this case. You
want
the acceptance of the Quadro and its introduction to be accomplished as
soon as possible. Any controls on the production of the Quadro means
that other companies, other nations will be able to copy or even better
the machine. This would be a catastrophy. France might be regulated to
the backwaters of modern society.
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