The Greengrocer's Algorithm

The greengrocer's algorithm is the Václav Havel — On AI simulation's term for the rational decision procedure that every participant in a system of distributed compliance performs. The algorithm is simple: calculate the cost of compliance versus the cost of refusal, recognize that the asymmetry is extreme (compliance costs nothing or very little; refusal costs everything or enough to matter), and choose compliance. The choice is rational. The aggregate outcome is a system sustained not by force but by millions of distributed rational calculations, each arriving at the same conclusion. The algorithm operates automatically—it does not require deliberation. The greengrocer hangs the sign without thinking, the way he locks the door at night. The knowledge worker adopts AI tools without deliberation, because every colleague has adopted them, because productivity metrics reward their use, because professional survival depends on competitive capability, and because the calculation—adopt or decline—arrives at adopt with such reliability that the decision ceases to feel like a decision and becomes simply what