Month: October 2012

According to Amy Lee, she believes that it is unethical to give prisoners the right to work while others who are not in prison are left unemployed. I completely agree with this view point for many reasons.

First of all, it has a negative impact on the economy because if the citizens who are not in prison do not have a job, they are considered unemployed and that means companies are not using their available resources usefully.

Secondly, I believe that it is not fair to give prisoners the opportunity to work as they are supposed to be spending their time for the mistakes they have made. Working is not a way of punishing them. Not only that, but the motives of companies is not right as they are looking for cheap labour. Cheap labour as a whole is not right because it prohibits educated people to be able to get a job because what they were going to do is being done by prisoners.

As a whole, like Amy Lee said, there is no limit and companies go for what they think is best for their company, even if they have to use cheap labour as a means of gaining profit and not having to spend so much money on factors of production.

Article link: http://www.canadianbusiness.com/article/95731

Original blogger: https://blogs.ubc.ca/amylee/2012/09/13/business-ethics-profiting-from-prison-labour/

The iPhone 5 has come out and the major disappointment is their map app

As MahindR said, the iPhone 5 map app has been a major disadvantage to the phone as a whole. I completely agree with this as I have updated my iPhone 4s to the new iOS 6 and was completely dissapointed by they defect in the maps as it had been advertised for its “3D maps” which are completely wrong and mislead the user which is drawback.

I would say that although the iPhone 5 does have a few good features, it is not the greatest product apple has made as the software update was available for most iPhones so the difference between the iPhone 5 and 4s are very minimial. In addition, although the iPhone 5 is still popular and there are people wanting to purchase it, the fact the map app is inaccuarate may lead to consumers to rethink when buying apple products (and may even choose an alternate phone).However, apple’s iPhone 5 is one of the best in the world, but in order to make sure that their consumers do not move entirely away from purchasing the iPhone 5, they should, like MahindR said, be motivated to create newer applications to improve the image of the iPhone 5.

Article link: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/05/us-apple-iphone-idUSBRE8941B020121005

Blog author: https://blogs.ubc.ca/comm101sec105/author/mahindr/

The following advertisement above is the one that PETA Is putting up near schools to make children think about what they eat. They are targeting children so that they can spark up discussions with parents and influence them to eat something else other than Turkey (specifically encouraging to go vegan). Although this campaigning strategy is targeting children, it’s targeting the more vulnerable population. Children are innocent so by PETA putting up their billboards near schools, children will take in what they see and qill question themselves..

The message in the image above is strong and the audience they are targeting is very emotional and putting up this advertisement outside elementary schools shows that PETA wants to target the vulnerable population who would most likely want to go vegan and ask their parents to not eat turkey or any other meat. Although PETA is an animal activist group and encourages people to go Vegan, is it ethically correct for any business to target school children specifically?

Vulnerable audiences is a major issue to think about because sometimes it may be ethical or unethical. Children is the most vulnerable audience and by advertising outside schools and near them, it may be bad exposure depending on certain products. PETA’s idea to  target school children may provoke other business groups and/or NGOs to do the same. This could, maybe, be a bad idea as businesses may abuse this idea and use it to advertise about wrong things to children. So as a whole, even though PETA is targeting schools to raise awareness about animal rights, it should be done in a way so they are not just going for the easy and vulnerable population.

Article link:

http://www.thestarphoenix.com/news/PETA+targets+schools+with+turkey+campaign/7319007/story.html