Hardly anyone is plenty

Every Saturday morning, a woman in Khobar walks the seafront path near her building with a bag and a pair of gloves, picking up what the night left behind. She posted about it once and invited anyone who wanted to join her.

Most weeks, four or five people turn up. In a city that size, that rounds down to nobody.

It is easy to read that as failure. It is actually the normal case. Take almost anything that keeps a place working and count the people who do it. Hardly anyone writes the reviews the rest of us rely on. Hardly anyone fixes the wrong address on the community page, brings the extra chairs, or keeps the residents' group going after the first enthusiastic month.

The same holds for customers. Hardly anyone buys a small seller's first collection. Hardly anyone opens a new newsletter in its first year. Set against the whole population, the numbers look like a rounding error.

But the whole population was never the point. The seafront is cleaner on Saturday afternoons because of four or five people. The reviews exist because of a few. Most of what gets built, kept or mended is built, kept or mended by a small group, while everyone else gets on with their day and benefits anyway.

That is not a flaw to be corrected with a bigger audience. It is simply how things work, and it always has been.

Hardly anyone is plenty.