Two small bets

A cobbler who works from a stall under a stairwell in Cairo has two small moves open to him. He could start selling a new kind of insole from a box on the counter, or he could take a little off what he charges to resole a pair of shoes.

Neither costs him much. On paper they are the same size of bet. I would not size them on paper.

They go wrong very differently. If nobody wants the insoles, the box ends up under the bench with the spare laces, and he has a story about a bad call. By next month nobody remembers. A wrong guess about something new says nothing about him.

If the cheaper resole was a mistake, every regular who brought a pair in that week has learned that his price bends. He can go back to the old figure tomorrow, but it will not read as his price any more. It will read as the price before the discount.

So the insoles were a bet on a product, and the discount was a bet on what his customers expect from him. Only the second one keeps running after he stops it.

The expensive mistakes are the ones his customers remember on his behalf.