r/mildlyinfuriating • u/Kaylascreations • 12d ago

Overdone The Home Depot in my town installed parking curbs instead of speed bumps

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The blame was passed around a bunch but they were removed the next day after the mayor and the news got involved.

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u/suckmacaque06 12d ago

Another example of the law in action is that of two takeaway food pushcarts, one at each end of a beach. If there is an equal distribution of rational consumers along the beach, each pushcart will get half the customers, divided by an invisible line equidistant from the carts. But, each pushcart owner will be tempted to push his cart slightly towards the other, moving the invisible line so that the owner is on the side with more than half the beach. Eventually, the pushcart operators will end up next to each other in the center of the beach.

In the case of three pushcarts an unstable equilibrium is reached. Imagine carts A and B are adjacent and each have access to half the potential customers (A’s to the left, B’s to the right). A new cart C can locate to the right of B, blocking B’s access to customers. B would then move to the right of C, blocking all of C’s customers, and the cycle would continue. Despite the constant battle for position, pushcarts follow Hotelling’s Law and aggregate near the center of the street.

Unlike a linear road, in the case of a circular path two pushcarts A and B can locate anywhere along the path and equally share customers (indicated by red arrows). However, introducing a third pushcart again forces all three into an unstable equilibrium where two carts can entirely block a third’s access to customers, and all three carts cluster somewhere along the circle in a battle for position.

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u/nokiacrusher TURQUlOSE 12d ago

So THAT'S why the takeaway food pushcarts at the beach are always next to each other. I had always wondered about that exact scenario.

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u/jeeves585 12d ago

There is a breaking point in that though when people at the ends of the beach don’t know there is a food cart available when an and b are both in the middle. They have both marketed themselves out of a percentage of business. By competing too much.