“Social contracts.” When folks don’t honor the social contract, I find myself thinking of the Three Stooges (I'm showing my age, I know.) and reacting like Moe did every time Curly uttered "Niagara Falls."
“Slowly I turn, step by step, inch by inch. I walked up to him, I smashed him like this, I hit him, I bopped him, I tore him to pieces, and then I knocked him down!” (Metaphorically, of course.)
Let me explain.
Imagine you live in a town like Arlington. Maybe you even work there. And it’s filled with interesting shops, great places to eat and fun things to do and see.
Imagine your town is known far and wide for its spirit of volunteerism, like Arlington. Maybe you belong to a wonderful church or you’re a patron of a museum or you’re a volunteer for a worthy non-profit or on a town committee because you believe in its mission. Maybe you have kids and you’re actively involved with a PTO or a sports team or a club. Maybe you gladly give of your time and energy because it’s important that you give back to the community.
Maybe when it comes time to raise money for that organization—no matter what it is—you are unstinting and generous. You cheerfully donate money and you’re willing to pick up the phone or pound the pavement to ask local business owners, large and small, to donate money or goods or services to your fund raiser, to your raffle or to your silent auction.
Sometimes I forget that many Arlington business owners get one, two, five visits a week from all of us, including me. Yes, that’s right. The Chamber makes calls and pounds the pavement, too, as it recently did for the eBusiness Symposium.
Maybe like the Chamber, you call on a coffee shop, a wine merchant, a bakery, a restaurant, a hardware store, a gift store, a printer or a beauty salon. Then the business owner donates some bagels or a case of wine or some cookies or pizzas and burgers or a small appliance or sporting equipment or printing or a pedicure or a certificate towards a service or a product or even its theatre space for your event.
If you agree that a contract is an agreement between two or more parties in which an offer is made and accepted, and each party benefits, then what I describe above is one side of the social contract.
For example, maybe it’s the Chamber that benefits from any and all of those donations. Or maybe it’s your school, your church, your non-profit or your organization that benefits.
Well, if each party is supposed to benefit, what about the other side of the social contract—the business owner’s side? How does s/he benefit?
Maybe s/he feels strongly about your cause. Or more likely, s/he sees it as a business arrangement. In exchange for the donation, s/he gets valuable marketing exposure as a sponsor or a donor either in an event program, or on our website or in our advertising. That advertising, s/he hopes, will encourage attendees to come to them the next time they need that product or service.
When that exchange happens, the social contract works and each party benefits. The same benefit accrues when local businesses do business with each other.
The money circulates again and again. In fact, there is even a name for this. It’s called the “economic multiplier” and means that the more we re-circulate money locally, the stronger our local economy is. Did you know that when we spend $100 at locally-owned independent businesses, at least $67 stays in the community, yet when we spend it at a non-locally owned business only $42 stays in the community?
When that exchange doesn’t happen, the social contract breaks down.
It breaks down when a business owner never sees us come in and buy muffins to enjoy or for the paint and brushes to carry out our next home project or the hockey skates or cleats for our child or bring in the print job of our own, or come in to dine or buy the wine and beer for our next party or even attend a movie or a live show. Instead, s/he suspects that we have traveled out of town to a big box store or into the city or that we’ve hopped onto the Internet without making local our first stop.
When we drive two or three towns over to visit the big stores or take a spin on the World Wide Web to save a few dollars instead of looking for it first here, we are taking our money out of our own neighborhood. The social contract becomes one-sided.
We want the donations but we won’t give them the business. Yet how can we expect local business owners to continue donating goods and services when we rarely if ever ask the same of commercial and retail giants?
Right now what’s happening on Wall Street is dominating the news. It’s a concern and worry for many of us as we meet our own economic challenges. Yet Arlington’s “Main Street” is not joined at the hip to Wall Street. We still need to buy goods and services.
The question becomes where do we buy and from whom? Do we buy from businesses that support our community, our schools, our organizations? Or do we buy from businesses that don’t?
We have a vote and we don’t have to wait until November 4 to cast it. In fact, we cast a vote with our dollars every single time we pull out our wallets and make a purchase.
So how will you vote? “Yes” to
* Fostering a vibrant community
* Being local, thinking local, buying local?
* Strengthening the social contract?
Or will it be “No?” Slowly I turn, step by step, inch by inch. . .(Metaphorically, of course.)
