We also have two kind of customers, the Franks and the Steins. They have the following utilities:
$v_{F}(x,y,t)=\log(1+x+y)+$t,
$v_{S}(x,y,t)=\log(1+x)+t$.

We have $f_M$ firms of the Mary’s type and $1-f_M$ firms of the Shelley’s type. And we have $h_S$ Stein customers and $1-h_S$ Frank customers.

Note that $x$ and $y$ are perfect substitutes for the Frank customer and the Stein customer does not purchase the $y$ good. The consequence is that the price of $y$ must not be bigger than the price of $x$, otherwise nobody is going to buy $y$. This gives us $p_y \leq p_x$.

We suppose the firms are profit maximizers and so we the firm’s supply is:
$S_x(p_x,p_y)=(1-f_M) p_x$.
$S_y(p_x,p_y)=f_M p_y$.

The demand function for the Stein is:
$D_S(p_x,p_y)= h_S \frac{1-p_x}{p_x}$,

and for Frank we have two cases, the first one, when $p_x>p_y$:
$D_F(p_x,p_y)= (1-h_S) \frac{1-p_y}{p_y}$,

and the second one, when $p_x=p_y$. In this case, as Frank is indifferent between $x$ and $y$, so the demand function will reflect this:
$D_F(p_x,p_y)=(1-h_S)(\alpha \frac{1-p_x}{p_x} +(1-\alpha)\frac{1-p_y}{p_y})$,

where $\alpha$ will be chosen endogenously.

Equating supply and demand for goods $x$ and $y$ we have that:
If $h_s+f_m \leq 1$, then $\alpha=\frac{-1 + f_m + h_s}{-1 + h_s}$ and the price is $p_x=p_y=0.618034$.

If $h_s+f_m >1$, then the price is:

$p_x=\frac {h_s – \sqrt {4 h_s – 4 f_m h_s + h_ {s}^2}} {2 (f_m – 1)}$,

and

$p_y=\frac {-1 +h_s + \sqrt {1 + 4 f_m – 2 h_s – 4 f_m h_s +
h_ {s}^2}} {2 f_m)}$

It is a little bit messy, as I can post graphics here, but using these prices to derive the welfare here, we can show that when $h_s+f_m >1$, the partial derivative of the welfare with respect to $f_m$ is always negative. This means that we have a lost of welfare in response to an increase of the participation of type Marys firms on the market.

Besides, the price $p_x$ above is greater than price $p_y$, so the Steins will end up paying more than the Franks.

In summary:
-Mary firms behavior is not welfare neutral. We have a kind of “maryweigh loss”.
-It does harm the Stein customers.

So the central authority has reasons to avoid this kind of Mary’s behavior.

If I have no car then I am at a similar disadvantage regarding where I can shop for groceries compared to those with a car. I will pay more for my groceries because I am buying an extra service, namely ‘convenience.’ If convenience stores could specifically target me as a non-driver they would surely do so because I have few if any other choices. As it is, though, their prices are higher on average than at the Wal-Mart outside the city. Like the non-Albanians the driver can choose at any time to pay the premium of convenience and unlike the non-Albanians even get the benefit of said convenience. Incidentally, this is an actual complaint against Wal-Mart, that it effectively discriminates by its location against the poor, which is probably true but completely stupid.

Now, an extra result could then occur if most non-Albanians are secretly as bigoted as Mary and actually prefer Mary’s ‘Albanian-free’ apartments. Then she’s offering an extra benefit just for bigots and perhaps could increase her price. But at the least the non-Albanians’ range of options has increased and that’s a benefit. If they don’t care one way or the other then they can just go against the grain and they’ll necessarily get to live in the cheaper apartment.

Stupidly, the only two parties being hurt by Mary are Albanians, reduced leverage, and Mary in exactly the same way, by reducing her customer base. This will of course decrease the amount of rent she is able to ask for. If she sells to a non-bigot Albanians rejoice and non-Albanians lose out big time.

Come to think of it this is exactly how your free-trade argument works. It’s Protectionism! Hey!?

This is exactly where we differ. I was seeing the government as being the “teacher” in this situation because they were the third party authority being appealed to by the two parties who cannot agree. Sometimes, as a teacher, I say to the kids, “Don’t come whining to me, work it out!” but if I do get involved, I enforce my sense of fairness – you must share with the class.

I think the businesses and individuals largely see the goverment as being in the teacher role because, right or not, the govt does have the power to enforce a standard of fairness. The government is being asked to intervene because of its authority, not because of its wisdom. If they wanted to consult with a peer, they’d go to the media, academia or another business for guidance. Right?

The tenants to be have a utility of 1, when they rent an apartment, and 0 when they have to sleep under the bridge. The landlords get 1 when they rent and 0, when the apartment is closed, except for Mary, who gets 1 when she rent to a Serbian, 0 when the apartment is closed and -Infinity when rents to an Albanian.

Suppose that I+J is also the number of landlords and the number of available apartments. We have a kind of a matching situation here. If it happens for an Albanian to knock on Mary’s door for an apartment, the result is that Mary will refuse an agreement, and the Albanian will sleep under the bridge. But this is not the end of the story. The Albanian can propose an agreement with Darko, a Serbian who rents and apartment from the landlord Ivanovic. The Albanian poposes the following: Come on Darko, if you rent Mary’s apartment and let me rent Ivanovic’s apartment, I can give you half of my rent. Darko will end up with one an a half utility, which is good for him and the Albanian will end up with half utility, which is better than having 0 sleeping under the bridge.

So in the event that an Albanian is allocated to Mary’s door, we have an increase in the Serbian’s rent and a decrease in the Albanian’s rent. So the fact that Mary’s refuse to rent to an albanian benefit the Serbians and hurt the albanians. As the probability of this undesired match is positive, we have an expected loss in the albanian’s welfare.

In response to a much older post, Mary does not shift the supply curve left by refusing to rent to Albanians. If Mary would never have offered any apartments for rent if it meant she would be forced to rent to Albanians, then by offering apartments to non-Albanians she has increased the supply of apartments. Since these apartments would be perfect substitutes (for non-Albanian renters) for pre-existing apartments, the demand for apartments which allow Albanian occupants would decrease. The important distinction is that Mary, if forced to rent to Albanians, could simply stop renting apartments to anyone and suddenly be rid of her obligation to rent to Albanians.

This point leads to my last response, which is to the post regarding the flaw in the Albanian apartment logic. Both of the examples which you cited exist specifically because of the externalities associated with them. In the apartment example, no such externality is present.

However, there is a vast network of laws to prevent this act on my part. It is in complete violation of my property rights. This abrogation of my rights is deemed expedient for *social* purposes. There is a higher moral value being served, allegedly.

Therefore, in concordance with that type of reasoning, Sony also is bound to accept certain requirements that prohibit certain acts and obligate others. There is simply no property defense to be made. We have already established that property rights are not absolute.

In this case, because the lawsuit is brought on behalf of a citizen, who has a natural human right to participation in the discourse of our nation (a discourse which includes playing video games), we can reach no other conclusion than one that seeks to balance both the natural right of the citizen to participate in society and the right of Sony to be sovereign with respect to its actions.

Furthermore, a corporation is a legal fiction that enjoys a special status in our economy (it is no mere collection of individuals). As such, the obligations of a corporation go beyond the ordinary. While the government may not reasonably expect private citizens to close caption their video blogs or home movies, we certainly can have laws requiring commerical enterprises to make close captions available on all of their video works.

To start off, the ADA as generally applied never requires a business to invest so much in accessibility that there would be material financial harm. This is why, for example, wheelchair accessibility, which can require very expensive and disruptive design and construction to add to an existing building (but has relatively little cost for a new building or one being substantially remodeled), is almost never imposed “out of the blue”. Further, the inherent nature of a product or service can and does lead to a determination that to provide accessibility features would be *un*reasonable (remember, this is “reasonable accommodation”). Someone brought up music — there are no circumstances under which the law could ever be applied to require that a musician make their music “accessible” to the deaf.

However, the issue here is actually an unbelievable degree of negligence on Sony’s part.

Had they merely paid a little attention in the beginning, there would have been no meaningful cost associated with providing accessibility. Configuration files allowing customization of colors and hooks for screen readers would go an incredibly long way, and be utterly trivial for any competent developer to implement.

Making this more pathetic is that Sony already had experience in these matters. I remember specifically an EverQuest player I knew years ago with MS. His primary means of control on bad days was voice control. Somebody at Sony had taken a little time and implemented hooks to the Windows voice API, and actually put a lot more thought and care into it than I would have ever expected. I even wound up using it some myself, despite not having any sort of disability.

Now they decide they can’t even put in the hooks to let others do the work for them? Color me unimpressed…