Economics in Star Wars: Discrimination Against R2D2
What are the economic lessons we can learn when droids are discriminated against?
The Star Wars series can teach us a lot about economic concepts, and this is part of a series on economic lessons from Star Wars. Each week I’ll be dropping new videos explaining different lessons we can learn. In these videos I am joined by Ben Smith, an economist at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, to discuss. Ben and I (along with Bailey Hackenberry) co-created the Economics of Star Wars website.
What Do We Learn?
We watch three short clips from the Star Wars Universe - two from the Mandalorian and one from the movies - and find cases of discrimination. In all of them, we see discrimination against droids but relate it back to discrimination in general.
A couple key lessons:
Those who discriminate pay a cost for discriminating. They are either turning away business or hiring/employing a less productive worker.
Markets help correct discrimination. Because of the motive for profits some firms that don’t care about “doing the right thing” and only care about profits would hire those discriminated against. That would increase their demand and wages and reduce the levels of discrimination.