Gas stations are frequently built directly across the street from competing stations because of a mathematical concept known as Nash Equilibrium, which dictates the optimal location for maximizing market share.

A closer look

Gas stations are frequently built directly across the street from competing stations because of a mathematical concept known as Nash Equilibrium, which dictates the optimal location for maximizing market share. If one station moves further down the highway to capture a new demographic, the other will inevitably follow to split the traffic, resulting in them always clustering tightly together in the most annoying way possible. It seems incredibly inefficient to have four different oil conglomerates occupying all four corners of a single intersection while miles of rural highway have zero fuel options. You are forced to play fuel-gauge roulette in the middle of nowhere, solely because corporate game theory proves that aggressively shadowing your rival is the best way to extract dollars from exhausted road-trippers. Capitalism has essentially optimized real estate to ensure you always have thirty varieties of beef jerky in one spot and absolutely nothing for the next hundred miles!