Nobody met on Faisal Street

At rush hour on Faisal Street, the microbuses start cutting their routes in half.

The driver shouts a nearer stop than usual, fills the seats, takes the full fare, turns around and does it again. A passenger heading to the far end has to change twice and pay three times. By the second week of this, people at the stops are sure the drivers have agreed it among themselves.

They have not. Getting a few hundred drivers, each working for himself, to keep a secret pact would be close to impossible. Most of them have never spoken to each other.

What they share is not a plan but a set of conditions. The fare is the same for a short ride as a long one. The traffic at the far end eats an hour. The driver pays the owner a fixed sum for the day, and keeps whatever is left. Every one of them, alone in his seat, does the same arithmetic and reaches the same answer.

That is how most of the patterns that feel rigged actually work. Landlords, shops, schools and drivers each respond to the same pressures in the same way, and from the outside it looks coordinated. It is simply a system, working in the open, rewarding exactly what it rewards.

This matters because the response to a conspiracy is anger at the conspirators. Shouting at one driver changes nothing. He will be replaced in the queue by another man doing the same sum.

If the outcome is unfair, the useful question is what makes it pay. Then comes the slower work of changing that, and of keeping at it long after the shouting has stopped.