Time Stands Still For None.
John was sitting in the middle of the open office area, littered with his employees, at their desks, all chairs facing him.
"What we are about to do will shake the foundation of the town as we know it." John began to speak.
"Our town is about to undergo change, whether we like it or not. These corporate, hired thugs, are going to be soon spending millions to 'do us a favor' by replacing Old Henery's Gas and Service with a brand new shiny Coco's Quick Stop. They will run every small business out of business, all in the name of progress.
This progress they are going to be speaking of will force all of these, now successful, business owners to go get a job for far less than they are making now, in order to make ends meet. There is no doubt that some will sell out and move. These people will aid in creating a town, not of neighbors, but of residents. We will lose all of our history and culture. We will be gentrified and become yet another cog in the machine of giant corporations that is socializing this entire country by knocking down the future generations.
Understand that their goals are long term. We will be living short term and they will have the upper hand. They will be able to price control us into the dirt. When you go to any of these large chains, the first three years no one can beat their prices, then once they have claimed the market share enough to pull their target numbers in the doors, they raise the prices to make up for the 3 year losses. Meanwhile, the smaller competitors have all but filed bankruptcy or sold out to salvage their life retirement." John was now standing and becoming very animated as he walked around making eye contact with each employee he passed.
"Sir, may I ask a question?" One of his employees raised a finger in the air.
"Of course." He answered.
"What about the people just getting by in this town? They would benefit from the lower prices wouldn't they? The employee asked.
"No. That is a great question though. There will be multiple new large chains that will move in in a matter of a few years. When, let's say, John Doe goes to the new chain to buy some lumber at a reduced rate, he will find that has has a little left over from his normal purchase, but since his income has now declined the payout is about the same. John Doe, though sees the savings and says, well I budgeted for $X and I now have $Y left, why not go grab some lunch. So Mr. Doe heads over to the local chain restaurant and buys a meal, for twice as much I might add, and then heads on his merry way. Now, this may seem sustainable in the beginning, here is the problem, these large corporations put money back into the local economy through payroll, and more than likely they will have far more employees than the stores they have bought out, but paychecks are different than what is happening now.
Right now if you go buy lumber you are not only paying paychecks at Chip's, you are paying paychecks at Standard Mill, Print-O-Rama, Italian Brothers Pizza, Knocker's Heating and Air, Smith's Electric, Market 4 and so on. These businesses are all connected and use each other's services and products. These large corps have their own teams, from somewhere else. By taking that money out of our community we will allow them to make us less wealthy. With money staying in the community, we can build our wealth by attracting money from close by local towns. That is the healthy competition we need. This supposed competition they will bring is not healthy, because no local business owner will be able to compete with multi billion dollar companies whom can take a 3-5 year loss in order to benefit for the foreseeable future.
In fact these corporations all have one common weakness. Money." John paused and looked around the room at attentive eyes, waiting patiently to hear the rest of his story.
"I was going through my desk this morning when I came across a memory. My mentor, Frank Chapmann, gave me this penny..." John held up an old worn copper penny.
"He told me that this penny is made of almost all copper, the new pennies were not. He continued to tell me that this was a way for the big banks to cut costs and still represent the value by copper coating the penny. People bought into this. He said that one day this penny will be worth many of those "cheap" pennies, because the cheaper metal will only stay cheap since there is an overwhelming abundance of it in the ground. Copper, he said, has intrinsic value, which is why it was chosen for coinage. Today, that same copper penny is worth 2 of those cheap zine pennies. We know this because our town was named after a big zinc mine we have here. We know what the value of our penny is. Am I right?" John paused while the group was starting to understand what he was saying.
The employees were all nodding and agreeing with their neighbors. Someone spoke up. "The many penny mine!"
"That's right. Ask yourself this. 'why is it that the Federal Reserve Mint issues $1 Silver Eagles and sells them for SPOT?' Well then.. You need to rethink what we have been doing. I am at this point reminding all of you about the NDA you signed when I hired you. Does anyone here have any questions, and is there anyone here who wishes to rescind their NDA for any reason?" John said plainly and openly coming across without a bit of threat.
"So this is NDA classified?" Mikel, chuckling while he was speaking.
Laughter filled the room, but not a reply to his question.
"Alright then, You are all now considered NDA classified." John said with a big grin on his face. "Time stands still for none. We have a meeting in exactly two hours, call your families and tell them your going to be late. When you get home, tell them that we will be working late, here and there, on a big project for a month or two, I will corroborate your story if I need to call each and every house myself. You can also remind them that overtime will come in handy."
John put the penny in his pocket.
