Please note…
The series, “13 Things You Can do to Kill Your Community,”
is a set of satirical open letters by
Doug Griffiths
which appeared as individual weekly contributions to
The Wainwright EDGE
during the spring and summer of 2005.
The series is not intended to be taken as instruction
for actually harming your community; rather its critical aim is to
increase awareness of everyday things we may not
recognize as being detrimental to our community.
13 Things You Can Do to Kill Your Community
by Doug Griffiths, MLA Battle River - Wainwright
Don’t Give a Reason to Shop Local
The fifth method of ensuring that your community fails actually has two components that are directly related to each other. Of course, we always hear Chambers of Commerce say that you should shop locally to keep dollars in your community, but seldom do we hear the Chambers preach about how important it is for businesses to give reasons to consumers to shop locally.
Essentially it comes down to this: every dollar spent within a community reaches seven other hands before it leaves the community (if people try to shop locally), which keeps the local economy hopping. Each dollar spent outside the community is gone for good. When those dollars leave, it affects the local economy drastically. So, if your ultimate goal is to drive your community to extinction it should be two-fold. First, ensure that you encourage people to shop out of town, which will lead to business closures within your community, job losses and, ultimately, people will move out.
There are typically three phases to a new business locating in town, especially if the new business is owned by someone who has lived in the town most of their life. Phase 1: the business opens and most people think it won't be successful and use that as an excuse not to shop there. Phase 2: the business is still around but people won’t shop there because the business owner is “making too much money,” so they go somewhere else to shop, making someone else money. Phase 3: the business goes broke and closes and then I get phone calls saying, “What is the province going to do about this… we just can’t keep businesses in this town.”
Jealousy is often a very strong human trait and is at the root of this problem. In fact, there is a very nifty trick that you can do that will encourage great success in ensuring your community’s failure. Talk to everyone in the coffee shop and on the street about how those greedy business owners are making so much money, about how they are doing too well, driving that are too nice, have houses that are too big, and so on and so on. That will ensure no one shops there, driving them out of business, creating job losses and encouraging the demise of your community.
Business owners can take part in this too, however. They can encourage people to shop elsewhere by charging high prices and expecting people to shop there because they provide a local service. Don’t clean up your business so it attracts people to enter your store, and don't treat your customers like customers, treat them like they have to shop in your store and that service and price are options that depend on your mood. Build your entire business founded on the principle that locals should and must shop locally and you owe them nothing.
The combination of these two things is one of the most surefire ways to ensure that your community will lose businesses, lose jobs, lose money, lose services and eventually die. If the failure of your community is your ultimate goal - this is the answer for you.
Secondly, encourage businesses not to be local-consumer oriented, thereby encouraging consumers to shop out of town.
