The Crowded Road

A road through the mountains could handle twenty carts per hour safely.

During harvest, farmers sent a hundred carts at once.

The road jammed. Carts blocked each other. What should have taken hours took days. Produce rotted.

The next harvest, a toll-keeper let through twenty carts per hour.

"We're waiting!" farmers shouted.

"You're moving," he replied. And they were.