Idea: Short Story: Two Old Store Owners

Background: I was in an Economics class, thinking about the theoretical conditions under which a producer (firm, company) can obtain the most profit from his business. I don't want to get too technical, but the idea is that there is a Minimum price at which you can sell an item and still make a net profit from that sale. Any price below, and you're a sucker who's losing money (for fellow economic geeks out there, this is the marginal cost of the good -- it should not be larger than the marginal price for which you sell an extra unit).

Anyway, I was musing about one of the fundamental, crucial assumptions made by economists, that is, that people are rational beings, who make rational decisions. I thought, is this really true? Are people always so sane and logical? Instinct and years of economics has told me No, often decisions made in market situations are not the optimal ones. In fact, they can be rather disadvantageous. I want to investigate that error in judgment.

Execution: I'd like for someone to write a short story, comedic, about two elderly men in a small town who own the same type of store (hardware? auto repair? appliance?) and are trying to put the other out of business. Except they are so stubborn and curmudgeonly, that they are willing to cut their prices so much that they take a loss, just to draw business away from the other. It actually becomes absurd how often they undercut one another...it gets so severe that it begins to occur multiple times per hour. Eventually some of the townspeople become alarmed by the rivalry that they try to warn the old owners against putting themselves into bankruptcy by charging too little, but each is so hell-bent on ruining the other that soon they are just giving their goods away.

The competition ends with both stores going bankrupt and out of business, and the men having to suffer defeat. Still, no embarrassment though; they are firm in their (irrationale) price war until the very end.

But does the story necessarily end there? Where do the men go after they lose their businesses? Do they learn a lesson? (I'm guessing not). Does the audience?

Inspiration: The short stories of Nikolai Gogol, who exploits the absurdity of the everyman in his ego-driven interactions with others equally as dimwitted as he.