Color and Widgets

Let’s imagine for a moment that we live in a world where owning a widget is damn near mandatory for each household to run. Imagine there are only three widget companies in your city. Imagine each of those companies offers widget delivery, widget insurance, and widget warranties. Now let’s imagine that your city only has two sides of town. Like most real cities, one side of town has a higher crime rate than the other. Now, let’s go a step further and say that one side of town has a population that doesn’t have English as their first language. But keep in mind, all widget instructions, warranties, and general widget related materials are written in English. Confused?

Check out the diagram below:

You see there are three widget companies but only one has a store in the blue section of town. And guess what? This Widgets R Us location only delivers widgets to homes in a 5 mile radius. As a result, the people in the blue section who live farthest from that Widgets R Us location usually go over into the red side of town to buy widgets. The messed up thing is that the Widgets R Us location at the top of the city, in the red section, delivers to the entire red section, not just a certain radius.

Because crime rates are higher in the blue section of town, widget insurance premiums are damn near double what they are in the red section of town. Also, the blue section has a higher widget replacement rate because widgets are often mishandled and/or left on back porches where they suffer damage due to rain, sleet, and snow. But since the red section of town has bigger homes and speak English, they can read the widget directions and store their widgets inside.

Let’s say you are the owner of Widget Depot. You only have one location and you’re competing with the other two big names in widget sales, Widget Express and Widgets R Us. So what do you do?? You could start catering to the people in the blue side of town. Maybe translate all of your widget related documents into Bluese. Maybe develop and sell a widget security system. But all those things require investments and you just don’t have the money.

Now, let’s put ourselves in the shoes of someone living in the blue section. Wouldn’t you be pissed?? You’re paying higher rates and can’t get anyone to deliver. One night, you’re at your local house of worship. People are sitting around doing what they do and you all start talking about the trouble getting widgets and those high widget prices. Then all of a sudden, a blue person who happens to live in the red section but worship in the blue section says that he pays a very low rate for his widgets. You get pissed. You and your group decide to sue the widget companies. You believe you are being discriminated against because you are blue.

I haven’t gone to law school. However, I call their case bullshyt!! They live in a crappy section of town. They have high crime rates. So I, owner of Widget Depot must charge them more. Otherwise, I will lose money. Or I would have to raise prices in the red section. Why should I do that when that section of town has low widget replacement rates? That wouldn’t be fair to them. As owner of Widget Depot, I’m making decisions based on zip code, not who lives there!! Is it my fault these people don’t speak the language and don’t read the fine print and end up breaking their widgets?? Is it my fault there’s more crime over there because their main source of income, a large widget factory, moved to India?? Nope.

What do y’all think?? Do the blue people have a case? If you were owner of Widget Express, what would you do?? Would your decisions be based on your bottom line or helping the widget deprived citizens in the blue section of town?