The End of the Road

Two business partners cooperated for twenty years. But when both knew the partnership would end in one final transaction, something shifted.

The last deal was different. There was no future relationship to protect. No reputation to maintain. No next month. The incentive to cooperate vanished with the horizon.

Both partners, anticipating the other’s defection in the final round, defected. But then each realized: if the last round invited cheating, why cooperate in the second-to-last? The logic unraveled backwards.

Cooperation that had lasted twenty years collapsed once both could see the end. The shadow of the future only works when the future exists.