Somebody is always choosing

Picture two winter night markets in Abu Dhabi.

At the first, the organiser walks the city for weeks beforehand. She turns sellers away. She puts the woman who binds notebooks by hand at the entrance, because people slow down there, and moves the loud phone accessory stall to the back. Some sellers complain. Visitors keep coming back.

At the second, anyone who pays can have a pitch, and the best spots go to whoever sold most last time. The organiser says this is fair. He is not choosing, he says. The sales figures are.

It sounds modest, and in the short run it works. Nobody can accuse him of favouritism. He never has to explain why one stall is in and another is out.

But it is not quite true. He chose the rule. A rule that rewards last month's sales rewards whatever sells fastest to someone passing by, and so, week after week, the best spots fill with the cheapest, loudest, most forgettable things. Nobody decided to make the market dull. The rule decided, and he decided on the rule.

The same thing happens anywhere a few people control what many others see: a shop window, a radio station, a feed, a shelf. Claiming to be neutral feels safe. It is actually a choice to let the place drift toward whatever grabs the next glance, until the people it was meant for wander off somewhere with more care in it.

If you are a seller, it helps to know which kind of place you are in. The neutral one will not treat you as special, however good you are.

And if you run one, the job was always to choose. The places people love are the ones where someone with taste had the nerve to do it.