I am not one who cries easily. My wife had to inform me that the ending to “Old Yeller” was not a comedy. Nonetheless, when word came down via social media that the Duvall Tavern was reopening after a three-month hiatus, tears welled up in my eyes, immediately and involuntarily.
But more than a building with food service, the Tavern is a gathering place. It is where I go to meet good friends, see infrequent acquaintances, and make new connections. In other words, the Tavern represents not just a commercial enterprise, but a social institution, and a vital one at that.
Uncertainty about the intentions of others, whether they intend to engage honestly or plan to cheat, is ubiquitous in large-scale economies that rely upon anonymous and quasi-anonymous trade. But the social learning embedded in institutions that promote even small-scale human interactions helps to alleviate uncertainty, build trust, and expand trade.
Bridging social capital, alternatively, represents the weaker relations that we have with one another. It represents the couple at the bar that you might see every other week and talk about football. Or it could be the bakery owner who you visit every few days to buy a coffee and pastry on the way to work.
Your first visit to the bakery probably occurred as the most sterile form of trade presented in Economy 101 textbooks—two dollars exchanged for coffee and a donut. But by the seventh trip, you are asking the baker about her kids, and she might be wondering why you weren’t around last Tuesday like you normally are. Neighborhood barbershops and salons are not just places that provide you with haircuts; they provide community space for all sorts of social interactions.
The “idle chit chat” that occurs in these places is the thread necessary for weaving our social fabric. These may not be your closest friends, but they are friendly faces that you begin to care about, trust, and have empathy for. These are the folks you hope will come to your funeral, or at least have a sad pause knowing you have passed.
And while deep bonding capital is often what we long for most, it is the bridging capital that often gets us there. Bridging capital is about discovery. It is about learning one thing about a new person, finding points of common interest, and then expanding those relationships.
Over the past three months, we’ve shut that down. No wonder the world seems more ominous. We don’t know who to trust because we can’t keep our faith alive in one another by being next to one another. The internet, we are discovering, is no substitute.
The network expanded; we attended birthday parties; groups went out on crabbing expeditions and shared recipes; and I found somebody able to fix my home generator’s power cord. My life was better because there was a place to create and build social capital. There was a bridge that built bonds.
It’s not just taverns or breweries. It’s gymnasiums, houses of worship, parks, and academic conferences. I could easily exercise at home, and have been with the mini-gym that we constructed for ourselves. However, I genuinely miss the folks in fitness classes who I may only see two or three hours per week. These are not close friends, but they are important acquaintances that over time I’ve learned I can rely upon for assistance when needed.
More importantly, these “little” interactions reassure me that humans are pretty good people in general. We build social trust together. This occurs similarly after Sunday church services, at college football games, and music concerts. It can also happen when someone stumbles in drunk to a hotel bar and buys the conference organizers a round of top-shelf whiskey (true story, by the way).
Political economists have long studied how to foster cooperation within societies of self-interested strangers. The basic, rationalist game theory model of cooperation (i.e., the prisoners’ dilemma) posits that defection from cooperation is the equilibrium position. But scholars such as Robert Axelrod and others have discovered that repeated interactions, even among strangers, foster cooperation.
Unfortunately, over the past three months, government policies dictating “stay-at-home” and to socially distance ourselves from one another have undermined all of this social capital, particularly the very delicate, yet crucially important, bridging capital. When we look to see how the economy recovers from the economic lockdown, we must not forget to pay particular attention to rebuilding the human relationships that were severed.
Remember that many commercial enterprises provide you not only with the goods and services you desire, but the vital space with which we all need to craft friendships, trust, and empathy. Without that, economies don’t function well. No supply-and-demand graph can ever capture that fully. You have to live it to believe it.
Truth be told, I actually did cry when (spoiler alert) Old Yeller crossed the rainbow bridge. And I did get a little misty-eyed when writing these words. No doubt it is my longing for a whiskey and Tavern Burger, but also probably knowing that I will be seeing some old friends, casual acquaintances, and making new friends once again.
Friends Read Free