Taste The Difference: The Pepsi vs Coke battle in the real world around us

Most of the world prefers Coke over Pepsi, despite what the Pepsi Challenge keeps declaring since the 1970s. Coke and Pepsi are both colas, and both look about the same. You’d be hard-pressed to differentiate one from another just by looking at the product in a drinking glass. The difference, however, comes in the experience after drinking.

People say they prefer Pepsi in a blind taste test. That’s the Pepsi Challenge. Yet Coke outsells Pepsi globally anywhere between 2:1 to 3:1 depending on the year. That includes, of course, all those restaurants and food venues where customers would like a Coke but are either told only Pepsi is available.

Why is that? They look so similar, and in a blind taste test people tend to say they prefer Pepsi, yet people prefer to buy Coke? Okay, Coca-Cola. Classic.

Why?

Pepsi is designed to taste good on first taste. Coke is designed to keep tasting good even as you keep drinking it. Pepsi is sweeter, which most of us prefer on first taste. Coke is less sweet, which most of us prefer as we keep drinking past the first sip.

There’s probably more to it in the formulations besides the sweetness, but that is one of the major factors behind this seeming mismatch.

More seriously, there’s a real-world Coke vs Pepsi struggle that is taking place before our eyes in public discourse and personal conversation. It’s between two concepts that seems at first blush to be very similar, possibly even meaning the same thing, yet give entirely different results and experiences.

It’s Equity vs Equality.

Equity sounds like equality, but they’re diametrically opposing concepts. Equality is a concept with which we are all familiar. Equity, not the kind to do with financial investments and business ownership but the one frequently bandied around in recent times, comes at things very differently.

Equality is about equality before the law and equality of opportunity. We are all accorded with the same degree of respect and consideration, and all have the same degree of opportunity to excel in ways or domains of our choosing. Whether man or woman, young or old, shade of skin or hair color, we each can shine as brightly and go as far as our abilities and capabilities will bring us. Groups of people with equal ability and capability are equally accepted and rewarded, free of arbitrary discrimination (that is, unrelated to the task at hand).

Until recently, this was a concept that was universally accepted in the western world. It is indeed a concept rooted in Biblically-revealed truth we are all created in God’s image and all of equal worth and potential. Hence its comparatively strong prevalence in the western world.

However, equality of opportunity and consideration and the meritocracy that comes from it is now seen as unjust and immoral. The ideal is no longer equality of opportunity on the combined grounds that we each have different strengths and advantages in body, mind, upbringing, and development (and therefore have different opportunities open to us) and there are societal systems in place that discriminate arbitrarily (that is, on factors unrelated to the task at hand).

Equity is about equality of outcome for all individuals. Whoever you are, wherever you are, however you are, you deserve the same outcomes as everyone else in health, education, occupation, financial reward, and social acclaim. Differences in any of these dimensions are the result of unjust circumstances and treatment.

Equity is the Pepsi between the two. It is the one that can have greater initial appeal, even once we know the two are different concepts, because we all prefer circumstances that seem fair. We do not choose the circumstances into which we are born: our family, community or country, our bodies, genetic dispositions and more. It seems unfair for one born in deprived circumstances to suffer simply because of those circumstances into which they were born.

However, just as Pepsi’s sweetness is initially appealing but becomes unappealing continued consumption, equity’s initial appeal of fairness loses its luster and attraction with increased application.

An implicit assumption with equity is all individuals are the same in temperament and inclination. For example ratios in various fields — for example engineering, nursing and teaching — or professional strata — for example C-suite executives — that are not 50:50 in male:female distribution is due to systemic discrimination and differential treatment.

This ignores the fact that temperaments and inclinations differ, most notably in personal interest in things versus people. Engineers who excel are more interested in things than in people, while nurses and teachers who excel are more interested in people than in things. Guess which gender tends to have greater interest in things and which tends to have greater interest in people?

It also ignores the choices individuals make in the course of their working lives and their temperaments. Most people, whether male or female, are not C-suite executives and do not wish to be. They may want the money that comes with it, but they don’t want the whole life that comes with it. Simply being an executive (and having the income) is not the same as doing an executive. Most men and most women do not want to live the life necessary to become and then stay a C-suite executive. They have neither the inclination nor temperament. The minority who do have them are extreme on the distribution curves along several dimensions, and the curves for men edge slightly higher on those dimensions.

Like it does relating to the prison population. Both men and women can be aggressive, but the distribution curve for aggression is a bit higher for men compared to the curve for women. When we then select for individuals above a high threshold, more of those individuals are going to be men. It’s not that we’re actively selecting for men, we’re selecting for those who are extremely aggressive and act upon that aggression and many more individuals at that level are men.

Where equity is Pepsi, equality is Coke. It works better in the long run when broadly applied because equality is meritocratic.

Take the following abstracted example: you are selecting candidates for a particular field, whether for leadership or some technical endeavor. People in the general population come from groups A, B, C, D. The general population distribution is 1 A: 2 B: 2 C: 3 D. Yet, you find in this field you’ve got 3 A: 2 B: 2 C: 1 D. You’ve got 3x more A’s than you’d expect from the general population and 1/3 the D’s.

So, someone decides you’ve got to change the selection process. The rate at which different groups apply to enter the field doesn’t matter, they say. The only thing that now matters is our final population in the field reflects the general population.

Where before your selection criteria ignored what group people came in and simply selected the top 25% performers, you’ve now got to make sure you end up choosing people in 1:2:2:3 ratio. That won’t affect the B’s and C’s. It will, however, drastically affect the A’s and D’s.

You’ve now got to select 1/3 the A’s you used to select, and 3x the D’s you used to select. The way you end up doing that is instead of selecting the top 25% of A’s, you select 1/3 of the top 25%. You select the very best of the A candidates because you can only have 1/3 of them.

And now because you’ve got to select 3x the D’s, you’re going to have to dig a lot deeper than the top 25% of D candidates.

What happens over time? Yes, you end up pulling in people into this field at a 1:2:2:3 ratio, but how do they perform? Because you’re pulling in the cream of the cream among the A’s, and pulling in a more representative sample of the D’s, people are going to end up seeing “all” the A’s excelling in the field while only a small portion fo the D’s doing so.

This ends up either creating or, more likely, exacerbating stereotypes related to A’s and D’s. You end up making things worse by meddling with what was initially a meritocratic selection process.

Distribution curves in both mean and range matter when we’re talking about performance and effectiveness. When results matter, a meritocracy makes most sense in all time frames.

Coke may not be as sweet on a blind taste test where you’re just drinking a few sips, but most people enjoy it far more when they’re drinking a whole glass or bottle. Likewise when it comes to equity and equality. One works far better when we step beyond the taste test.

Soli Deo Gloria.

Yπερνικᾶτε ἐν Χριστῷ. “Let us go be more than conquerors in Christ”

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