Corporate Ethics May Not Be A Joke To Everyone

For as much as I gripe about parts of Green Arrow, Ann Nocenti's writing continually intrigues me. Currently, she has Ollie in China trying to buy back control of his company. But the offer on the table requires him to hand over his outstanding facial recognition software, to someone he's fairly sure will use it for nefarious, probably human rights repressing purposes.

Oliver balked at it almost immediately, and did so in a way that lead to a fight almost right after, but I like the situation he's faced with. His company is about to fail entirely, people's livelihoods are at stake, and it's his fault. He didn't let his company get sold off, no, but it happened because he thought with his groin and his ego, and flew off with the Starlings. Which let this Emerson sleaze fake Ollie's death and take control of Q-Core, then promptly run it into the ground (out of maliciousness or incompetence I'm not sure).

Now Oliver can fix it, but it would require him to do something he finds morally objectionable. So what does he do? I really don't know. I'd have the same objections he did, but if it were my fault a bunch of my former employees were about to lose their jobs, I'd feel like I had to do something to reverse it. Ollie doesn't ever specifically say that's why he's doing it, but between the comments his support staff made, those whispers at the charity function, and the fact he's doing it all, I think that has to be weighing on him. I mean, he's not even convinced this is a real crisis. He thinks it might be his father, with yet another test to prove Ollie deserves his inheritance. Despite his suspicion, despite his frustration with these hoops he sees his father as having placed in his path, he's still going. That could be him refusing to back down from a challenge, but I think it is him trying to make up for past mistakes. Quite how he's going to manage that, I don't know.