Issues of Access

Where computer-aided design intersects with economics, it is a moral evil.

First, because CAD is expensive, it allows only limited access. Where only the rich can use CAD in a discipline that has become computer-dominated, there is a reinforcement of the haves and have-nots. Then too there is the need to learn the coding. One must take classes, listen to or read tutorials, and so forth. These options are not always available, and where available, not always affordable. Not only is there, again, a reinforcement and perpetuation of the class divide between rich and poor, but inavailability of training perpetuates geographic divisions (between Africa and North America, for example). Keeping the poor poor and the geographically-isolated technology-isolated are moral evils.

Furthermore, the divisions maintained and deepened by the expense of CAD lead to an ethical trap, in which the person who needs the usage of computer-aided design is forced between the Scylla of buying what cannot be afforded and the Charybdis of obtaining an affordable but unauthorized or pirated copy of the program. Forcing people to choose between "wrongs" is another sort of moral evil.