The bottom of the box

In a fruit market in downtown Amman, one seller stacks his best figs on the top of each box and the split ones underneath.

It works the first time. The customer pays, goes home, and finds the bottom half when it is too late to complain.

There is nothing unusual about the motive. Every seller in that lane is looking after himself, his family and his margin. Being selfish is not the problem. Everyone is.

The problem is the timescale. Hiding the split figs pays this morning and costs him every morning after. And it does not stay with him. The stall beside his learns the trick, then the one after that. Within a season, every shopper on the lane turns each box upside down before paying, haggles twice as hard, and starts buying from the supermarket with clear plastic trays, where nothing can be hidden. The whole lane is poorer, including the man who started it. When everyone plays for this morning, nobody wins the year.

There is a seller at the end of the same lane who tips the box out onto the counter before you ask. He is not a saint. He is selfish over a longer distance. He knows that his best days depend on the lane being a place people trust, and he would quietly like his neighbours to show the bottom of their boxes too.

That is the difference that matters. Short term selfishness takes what it can from the market. Long term selfishness wants to live in a market worth coming back to, and is willing to help build it.