From President Obama to the owner of the local audio/visual store, it seems as though everyone is telling us to buy locally. The basic argument is fairly straightforward: buying locally means that money stays right in the community. When you get your R&B hip hop music at a local outlet, instead of a chain store, you keep local businesses afloat. The owners in turn can hire more staff and can put the money they make back into the local economy.
It sounds like a good plan, but does it really work? Well, some of the traditional arguments for buying locally are not really that great. I don't know many business owners personally who hire extra staff for their small local stores just because people locally are supporting them. They will hire enough to make sure they can get those custom enclosures made on time, but that is about it.
Contract that with a big box store, the supposed enemy of everything local. How many people in your city does a Wal Mart or Home Depot employ? My guess is that local big box stores probably add up to about double the employees that smaller stores which would benefit from a buy locally program would have. So much for the employee argument.
Then there is the idea that buying from a local store will put money back into the economy. Again, we are supposed to trust in the good will of local business owners. Do we really think that they are going to spend all the money they make bolstering the economy in the city that they live in? Or is it much more likely that the money you spend on a flanger at a small business store, spending the extra money involved, will go to a vacation at some tropical location instead?
Of course, buying locally isn't all about just city businesses, and in this context the argument does start to hold water. If you buy products, from a global SIM card to automobiles, made nationally, you are definitely helping to boost a national economy. Again, though, one has to ask oneself how this actually benefits the individual who is doing the buying.
All that said, it is more than likely buying locally is the same for individuals as passing up on the increasingly automated services we are being offered at big box stores. Anyone who goes to a retail outlet to buy organic baby bedding and sees a self serve checkout should have some very basic concerns about our economy. If big box stores are allowed to go digital, we will really see the negative effects of passing up on buying locally; no one will have jobs!
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