Time = 1000

The categories offered by the brokers have changed many times since the last snapshot. Here, the broker 1 (blue) is offering category 3, the broker 2 (yellow) is offering categories 1 and 2, and broker 3 (red) has dropped out of the market. Consumers with high interest levels in all three categories subscribe to both the blue and yellow brokers, and are those shown in green.

The red broker's withdrawal just before t=750 occurred after a battle with the blue broker over category 3 (see Fig. 8). Although the myoptimal decision would have been to continue undercutting the blue broker, this alternative was not among the randomly-generated set of options considered by this random explorer. This emphasizes the point that, while sub-optimal individual choices may lead to higher utilities for consumers and brokers in the long run, a selfishly motivated individual broker would probably favor an optimal strategy over a sub-optimal one.