This essay is an installment of The Long Game, a Big Think Business column focused on the philosophy and practice of long-term thinking by Eric Markowitz, a partner at Nightview Capital . Subscribe to his weekly newsletter, The Nightcrawler, in the form above. Follow him on X: @EricMarkowitz . I want to tell you two stories. The first began in 1921, when a traveling salesman named William Barnard, nicknamed “Papa,” walked door to door in Ohio selling a 25-cent can opener. He called it the Polly. He believed, earnestly, that a better can opener could improve the health of the American family — that safer access to canned fruits and vegetables, year-round, would help people eat better. Sixteen years later, in 1937, he met an engineer named Al Bersted. By then, Barnard and his wife had turned vegetarian, cut sugar and caffeine, and watched a sick family member recover on whole foods. Barnard had become a health-food evangelist, selling vitamins out of the back of his car.…