Lining Up: The Microlegal System of Queues

Whether we are waiting for a bus, for tickets to a show, for our turn to vote, for a table in a crowded restaurant, for our sacramental communion with God, for a few moments in a public toilet, even, horrible dictu, for our turn in the gas chamber or for a Swedish visa from that fate, people in our civilization line up. In many situations in which there is a scarce resource and an aggregate demand that cannot be met simultaneously or divvied up, we seem, virtually spontaneously, to queue