Interesting and awful.

There's a beach, and two ice cream vendors. People will walk to the nearest one and give their business to that one. The salesman can position anywhere they like, yet the equilibrium outcome is for them to be side by side in the middle. Often cited as why candidates campaign in the middle and close together in a two party election. Not entirely relevant, but somewhat

Pretty good summary.

Are there branches of game theory that look ways of making things more optimal for consumers? For instance if the location of the crowd was unstable it might change the calculus for the vendors. Maybe we just need built-in perturbations to keep equilibrium points from being to predictable.

Ok. I am moving to a coast where I will set up ice cream stands with a delivery service and an app. The runners will stop periodically to stamp qr codes for the app in the sand. I'm putting everyone out of business.