Business Ethics Paper

Mitchell Hadfield

Dan Price Article

October 29th 15

My first reaction reading through the first two paragraphs was of pure admiration of David Price, for responding so drastically to his employees grudge. Then reading further down that that he has sold all his stocks, emptied his retirement accounts, and mortgaged his two properties -- including a $1.2 million home with a view of Puget Sound -- and poured the $3 million he raised into Gravity. It made me start to question this guy’s sanity. Of course you have to value the integrity he has to respond to the demands of his workers. But, he took it to another extreme by sacrificing his own worth for the financial betterment of others. “Price worried that employees with money troubles would fail to provide the top-notch service that had made Gravity successful. He also believed that low starting salaries were simply wrong”

I think price saw that if workers were happy then they would perform better at their given tasks, hence why productivity continued to raise on a yearly basis after he made the decision to make the minimum wage salary. Sitting here writing this paper now, as a middle class lad, I’m asking myself ‘if I had no money worries on my mind whatsoever how much better would I perform?’ now in my opinion the pressure free college student in my experience tends to skate along knowing that their parents will eventually find a place for them in white collar America. Therefore, theirs something I’m missing here, what changes the mindset of not worrying about the “200 dollar rent increase” that price’s friend was concerned with. How by raising the minimum wage did he not also encounter complacency?

Maybe without even trying, his idea sparked so much media interest that his employees saw he just created the interest that could turn his company into a super power. Like apple or facebook that we know today and they too were chasing the big paychecks of upper management in which they too strived for....