Game Theory or a Dilemma, the world from a 7 year olds eyes

Well, this comes out of nowhere literally, just strolling in “The festival city” mall on the occasion of Eid, we were discussing about the ME assignment and what all to write in it.

After a long walk and some window shopping for a few hours, we felt hungry and decided to grab a meal for us. The place was so crowded as if it was free food being distributed.

Grabbing a place to sit and eat looked like a horrendous task that day. We finally grabbed our meals and tried searching for a place to sit. Though we got hold of a table but were short of two chairs…next to our table were two small kids enjoying their meal. To our surprise one of them offered us a seat saying we can both share it till we find another one…I can sit for half the time and then he can…I was amazed at his gesture of this 7 year old Arab kid. To amaze me further this boy during our small conversation taught us a very good lesson in just a single line. Now what he said was “If everyone was good, we all would have had enough chairs.”

Wow!
Even he wouldn’t have thought of how big a solution that was to every crisis and every situation we humans create for ourselves and for others.

Now let’s try applying the game theory to this simple problem of not having enough chairs to sit.

If there is a family in the food court, suppose consisting of a woman, a man and two children. Now, if this family starts looking for chairs and they find four of them, they would all be seated comfortably and can enjoy their meals. Once they are done, they can make place of another set of people and so on.
Now, this is an ideal state but what happens when people who are in a bigger group start looking for more and more chairs around. They find free chairs grab them and be seated, wherever people find maximum chairs they grab all and get seated. Sometimes even after finishing their meals they remain seated and do not make way for others.
Also, if there is a shortage of chairs, people do not consider grabbing sufficient chairs to seat the females and children first, but think of maximizing the chairs so that everyone can sit. This kind of strategy is called the dominant strategy. Though many people would say that this is the best way to make sure all are seated. This actually is not the most efficient way. Let us now think of a scenario where according to the little boy, everyone is good. In such a scenario, what everyone should do is to grab enough seats first to seat women and children and then if there are sufficient seats around, should go for more chairs. This sort of situation can be termed as Nash equilibrium.
But the hindrance to this sort of behavior comes when one man does not believe that the other will do so. He has a doubt that the other person may go for all the chairs and hence tries to maximize his chairs. This leads to maximum chairs for one but scarcity of chairs for many.
If we apply this to the world outside, we all try and maximize our profits and those who succeed in doing so do that cutting other’s margins or chances of earning a living.
What if we were considerate enough for the needful? What if we all make a cartel so that everyone gets an equal opportunity to have a go at things they desire? Why don’t businesses of today aim at providing things, not at a premium price, but things everyone can afford?