I've had this exact sentiment for many years but... what are we supporting really?
Is it because you want a distributed network of inventory across the country near you in case of emergency?
Is it because you like talking to someone when doing purchases?
Is it because you think someone is doing a societal good by parking money in inventory they brought near you?
Is it because you just don't like someone doing it more efficiently and getting "too" rich? ie dislike of big corporations?
Like I feel like I should want to support local business but it is way less efficient and I can't really convince myself that I'm not just repeating something my parents also said.
I found myself gravitating back to local stores after years of buying essentially everything on Amazon because local stores at least to some degree curate their inventory while Amazon increasingly does not. If you're looking for a specific product that doesn't matter as much (although Amazon also has counterfeiting problems). But if you're just looking to browse what's available in a certain category of product, Amazon is nearly unusable. You'll almost certainly find dozens of Chinese companies with randomly generated names selling what are essentially copies of the same product with no good way to pick one or even tell if they're any good (reviews being basically useless on Amazon these days).
Because they don't have the same unlimited inventory capacity, local stores have to put at least some effort into selling products with some base level of quality and focusing on the products most likely to sell in each category. Local stores are by no means perfect here, but they're vastly better than Amazon in this regard. And it's especially important because finding good independent product reviews on the internet these days is also a challenge, and even where they exist they're not reviewing whatever no-name Chinese brand Amazon is selling anyways.
While the junk item situation on amazon is real, I can't agree with this take about local stores. I find that local stores tend to have random crap that they want to sell rather than high-quality items.
I just searched for a Wifi Extender on Amazon. This [0] particular model has 3.6k reviews, and is the first option after "Amazon's Choice" Must be good, right? How about we scroll down to one of those reviews [1]. Oh, looks like it racked up a bunch of reviews for being a washing machine hose, and then changed product SKU.
You see the #1 option has 36K+ reviews. Looks pretty solid to me.
Yes, you can purchase pages and change the product, it's a known scam that I agree Amazon should crack down on. That still doesn't change the fact that there are super-popular items that are usually way better than what you can purchase locally.
I didn’t ignore the advice - I showed a link to a popular product that has thousands of almost perfect ratings that is readily available on amazon.
An even better way to do it is don’t use Amazon for discovery, and only buy stuff you’ve researched off the site. But walking into Amazon to buy something is just as likely to land you with crap as going into your local shop and doing so.
Yes, exactly my experience as well. And the more of a mom and pop store that it is, the worse this problem tends to be. I have actually audibly laughed out loud for a second before catching myself when seeing some of the prices.
Ironically, it's the big chains that seem to be the best on this. They have some curation and their pricing is usually a little higher than What I'll see on Amazon but isn't outrageous.
The big exception is anything edible, such as groceries. Anything edible on Amazon is going to be wildly overpriced. For edible items I definitely go to big chains that are local
It has been surprising to me for years that people put up with this, I find it really terrible as a shopping experience. Like shopping in the worst dollar store you’ve ever been in that’s also the size of a city and loaded with ads, except you can’t actually touch the products or smell the pervasive scent of cheap plastic while you browse. And they want you to pay a subscription!
Shopping from retailers that employ actual buyers feels like a real upgrade.
What you are supporting is local sustainability. The world would be better off with less global trade and more local productions. Local productions means a stronger community and more visibility for business practices, because it's more sustainable.
If a global business decides to just toss all the plastic it uses it in its backyard you'll never notice because it's 2000 miles away. If Amazon decides to treat their workers unfairly, you'll never notice. But you'll notice if a local business does it because you'll be walking in there every day. There's a level of accountability.
In my grandpa's village everything was local production and commerce but they all lived way worse than me and my friends that get paid through remote companies and spend our money online. It's incredibly unclear to me why a super poor and undeveloped local economy is better than a specialized globalized one. In my country there was a dictatorship with protectionism and when we opened things got way better, not worse.
Regarding me not noticing crimes, I think we have police and regulations for that.
> In my grandpa's village everything was local production and commerce but they all lived way worse than me and my friends that get paid through remote companies and spend our money online.
(1) That is because technology also takes away components of life that one can enjoy without being rich such as accesss to nature and local food production.
(2) The global economy is only so "good" because it takes advantage of the commons in poorer places. We simply should not have the capability to do that. You only benefit off the suffering of others.
On (1), I grew up behind the iron curtain in a pre-internet age next to a village (no TV, no organized entertainment). The typical non-working activity there was not to enjoy the beauty of nature (as farmers they were fed up with it) but to be bored, get drunk and start fights with anyone non local. When the economy opened up in late 1980s anyone who could ran out to cities.
I will take technology and some globalism any day. My 2c.
That's the thing that I see a lot of. I grew up in Africa, and was exposed to extreme poverty, since as far back as I can remember.
People living poor don't like it. They may have accepted it, and may have learned to deal with it, but they don't tend to like it. They want out, and generally jump at the chance to do so.
People in richer communities may have fantasies about "living closer to nature," but that doesn't usually involve things like shooing rats off your kids at night, or having your house collapse, when there's a 3.0 earthquake.
People in poorer communities may have unreasonable expectations of what having money will bring, and we often see poor people that get rich quick (think Lotto "winners"), having pretty miserable lives.
The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.
I picked a place to live that's close to nature, right across my back fence from millions of acres of public forest. I love it here. Poverty is not required. I commute to work via Starlink and most nonperishables are delivered to my front porch by UPS, mostly from Amazon. It's green on both sides of my fence, and it's a choice that normal people, who can work remotely, can make if they value it. My house is far cheaper than one in a city and local costs are lower. Amazon deserves credit for making such a lifestyle easier, and if we can export more of it, that sounds like an advance.
I understand the joy of your choices. I live in an old mill town that has had multiple Renaissances. I consider myself lucky because I live at the edge of the town and have a 10,000-square-foot lot that is in the process of intentionally rewilding. My house wasn't necessarily cheaper than other houses. It's much more living space, fewer neighbors, and roughly the same cost per month as a three-bedroom apartment closer to where my partner works.
The downside is that she has a 1 1/2 hour commute. Not because of distance but because of congestion. She is willing to take public transit, except it takes roughly twice as long to take the train, then a bus, then another bus, then a third bus, and not be able to do errands during the day or on the way home.
That is all well and good and a setup I totally understand. Now that I am in the US I like that my home is 15 steps away from a good-sized network of forest trails. Nature is good. But it is good because of technology: unlimited potable water, plenty of energy to keep my home warm, electricity and internet and cars to get me to the downtown or an airport when I feel like it.
But my opponent, to whom I responded, wants to "severely restrict technology". And this is what I have beef with. Those folks tend to be from rich countries and want to freeze things at their current, comfortable for them, level. They do not want to give up the running water, swear off vaccines and antibiotics or go through dental work without painkillers. Which is where a large part of the world would be stuck under this "technology restriction".
False dichotomy. Both situations are bad because both are predicated on lack of wisdom. A lack of wisdom in a poor place implies brawls and wanton violence. A lack of wisdom in a rich, technological age implies resource destruction and climate change.
Wisdom combined with restricted technology would be ideal, such as with the Amish. They have their problems but they show that a technologically restricted society is best. Note: I am not arguing for NO technology, but severely restricted technology.
Who is going to do this "severe restriction of technology"? The people themselves, as you write, do not want to do it.
And anytime a self-appointed elite start doing "what is best for the people" against their will, police repression and labor camps are also on the menu. Nah, I will take my freedom, including the freedom to make mistakes.
You assume the people always won't. There's a growing amount of skepticism towards technology and it's quite possible people will begin to hate it. I myself intend to spread the word about the dangers of technology to the best of my ability.
Ok, let's restrict the technology. What's the end goal?
Because 1 billion years from now, even if humanity is back to before the wheel technology plants will have disappeared and the oceans evaporated due to the sun.
If we want Earth originated life to have a chance to go over this bump something will have to go forward.
I find myself falling into this line of thought a lot: why should we make tradeoffs that favor the earth instead of hyper-accelerating progress to get off of it in preparation for its inevitable demise?
But isn’t the entire universe also going to meet its end as well, in an anticlimactic heat death? To overcome that, a civilization would have to reach universe-level Kardashev-like energy utilization capability, which would necessarily consume every particle in the universe, including themselves. It seems infeasible and unwise.
Maybe it would lead to the next big bang… but that still is a death and rebirth.
I think ultimately folks that support post-earth transhumanism operate on a notion that they themselves or their direct descendants that they will know and love in their own lifetimes will benefit from this space-colonial survivalist utopia. But IMO the reality is that if it is even possible, it would only happen long, long after they and everyone they could know or imagine are dead. It would likelier be accomplished by a society and civilization that they would hate and believe should be exterminated, due to the tradeoffs that would have to be made to accomplish it.
It’s essentially an individual’s desire to live forever and avoid death, projected onto the human race. I’m not convinced it would actually be nice to live forever. Better to focus on how to make the short time we have be as good as possible. IMO the idea of eternal life leads to all sorts of perversions of the now in exchange for an assumed eternal afterward.
> I find myself falling into this line of thought a lot: why should we make tradeoffs that favor the earth instead of hyper-accelerating progress to get off of it in preparation for its inevitable demise?
Get off and go where? Anywhere we could go is a million times worse for human habitation than post-demise Earth.
I think the idea is: assume sufficient technological advancement to be able to reach or even create countless other essentially exact replicas of earth? Barring that, plenty of ideas have been floated along the lines of extraterrestrial colonization and/or intergenerational spaceships.
I’m not arguing strongly in favor of “getting off it” so I’m not going to make much effort defending the position.
But I can imagine scenarios where we have to leave earth with intergenerational ships and only then acquire the ability to terraform, harness a star’s energy or travel at light speed.
(2) They where literally describing a poor area being better off with global trade.
Economies of scale and local advantages make the world better off. There’s no advantage to growing bananas in greenhouses in Iowa when you can grow wheat and trade with Panama.
Off the top of my head, the advantage in having bananas grown near you verses imported from Panama is that they are possibly fresher. This is assuming they can grow in your area and are in season of course. Produce is a special case in this regard locally sourced can potentially be healthier.
That is to say everything isn't objectively always 100% better with globalization and specialization at least not until come up with faster methods of shipping.
You can grow bananas in Alaska, but you can’t simply plant them outside. Thus my example assumes greenhouses built to a large enough scale to handle trees which is a major economic and environmental cost.
Comparative advantage applies to a huge range of things not just bananas. You could mine cobalt basically anywhere at extreme expense, but everyone is better off when that happens in locations that naturally have extremely high concentrations of cobalt.
That local trade involves taking advantage of the commons (putting CO2 in the atmosphere) to make it work. In my opinion, we do not have the right to take that advantage.
More CO2 is produced manufacturing and maintaining those greenhouses than shipping fruit from tropical locations.
So no, in this case local production is simply worse for the commons. More broadly things that cost dramatically more are generally worse for the environment in subtle ways.
Locally sustainable goods becomes really limited very quickly. You don’t just lose foods but technology as most of the periodic table becomes unavailable, even low tech items like salt needs to be imported into most areas.
On the other hand even occasional imports supports global trade and a dramatically higher standard living. The option to decarbonize global trade is exists, ‘local’ is more feel good nonsense than an actual path forward.
Well for one, lots of my local economy would just involve trade and helping community members for free, creating local community gardens, etc. Quite a lot can be possible with very little.
>my local economy would just involve trade and helping community members for free, creating local community gardens, etc. Quite a lot can be possible with very little.
Isn't this basically collectivization, which empirically has been shown to a massive failure? Without a monetary incentive, it's hard to get people to actually do stuff rather than lying on their couch and watching tiktok.
The first point is true, but most people do not choose it.
I do not think your second point stands. Almost the entire world is financially better off than it was in the past. Lots of third world economies are visibly richer than they were a few decades ago. Whose suffering are they benefitting from?
> The first point is true, but most people do not choose it.
Because they lack wisdom and human beings en masse operate on instinct, not wisdom.
> Almost the entire world is financially better off than it was in the past. Lots of third world economies are visibly richer than they were a few decades ago. Whose suffering are they benefitting from?
The classic reply of the economist. It's because the industrial world measures better off with variables like "life expectancy" and "money".
But a longer life does not a better life make, nor does money always equate to better off.
For example: if I could live next to a beautiful national park and walk there every day, that would be more valuable to me than a million dollars but living in a huge city. How does the prevailing evaluative mechanism account for that?
>The classic reply of the economist. It's because the industrial world measures better off with variables like "life expectancy" and "money".
I'd take arguments with objective metrics over handwavy arguments involving vibes, because with the latter you can make whatever argument you want with them and it's impossible to refute.
>For example: if I could live next to a beautiful national park and walk there every day, that would be more valuable to me than a million dollars but living in a huge city. How does the prevailing evaluative mechanism account for that?
You can ask for how much people are willing to pay for access to such a scenery and put a dollar value on it, or try to infer it based on housing price patterns (eg. house next to national park vs equally rural house next to corn fields).
> I'd take arguments with objective metrics over handwavy arguments involving vibes, because with the latter you can make whatever argument you want with them and it's impossible to refute.
You can define other concrete metrics. Distance to wild nature for example. That's concrete.
Also, there has been a visible improvement in living standards in third world countries. More money does not mean people have a better life in a rich country because there are diminishing returns on having more money. In a country where most people are a lot poorer and desperately need more money, more money does mean better off.
I am pretty sure people who can afford a proper house instead of a slum stack, or have a proper toilet, etc. are better off. As I said, there are visible improvements in the lives of the very poor.
"For example: if I could live next to a beautiful national park and walk there every day, that would be more valuable to me than a million dollars but living in a huge city."
That is your preference. Many people prefer living in a big city.
Also, what about how good your conditions of life are next to the beautiful national park? A nice house in a big city with good food and leisure time vs a shack in the beautiful place, hard work to grow a barely adequate amount of food?
The prevailing evaluative mechanism would note that you could take that million dollars, invest it in a 4% annuity, and move next to the national park of your choice with $40,000 in your pocket every year for the rest of your life. Indeed, there's a whole movement called FIRE of people who do things like this.
But there's also people like me, who say that sounds great but don't really mean it, because it's cringe to admit that you care about money.
The last 40 years have seen enormous economic growth outside the G7 to the point that North America and Western Europe no longer dominate the global economy.
Vice president Vance marrying a woman from India was a look into the future. The rich elite know what's happening.
That is the other extreme that is also bad. In economies like that protectionism supports inefficient local production - favouring some people at the cost of others. It is designed to funnel money away from some people to others.
The dominance of the economy by a few big companies also has the same effect - elimination of competition.
Where were the police and regulations when Boeing's products killed hundreds of people? Last time I checked, nobody among top management went to prison for that.
That's what "too big to fail" corporations can get you: failed products, anti-competitive environment, regulatory capture, no responsibility.
Getting fined for a few (hundred) million dollars is not responsibility, it's chump change for multi-trillion dollar corporations.
You can have "global business" that aren't "too big to fail". If anything, if you're pro-competition, blindly buying local has the same anti-competitive effects, because you're protecting the local firm from competition from elsewhere.
We have police and regulations but they only apply to the country you are in.
Most of the cheap stuff we buy is from other countries, they don't have the same regulations and protections that we have, hence part(not all) of the reason they are cheap.
Take a look at the cheap chargers on Amazon for example, marked as UL listed but you open them up and you see a circuit that is liable to start a fire. Someone reports it, the vendor vanishes and then there are 5 more listings under different names. See also the lead paint on toys scandal and poison pet food/treat scandals.
> What you are supporting is local sustainability. The world would be better off with less global trade and more local productions. Local productions means a stronger community and more visibility for business practices, because it's more sustainable.
This is true for the extreme minority of products that ARE produced locally.
If you buy a screwdriver from the privately-owned DYI shop around the corner it will have been produced in the same Chinese factory and shipped by the same boats and trucks as the one you'll buy from Amazon.
You're not at all supporting local sustainability, you're just paying more to add one more middleman.
Well, also, if you don't support Amazon, then you don't support the growth of a large company like Amazon which is one more component of the collection of big corporations that are exactly those responsible for globalization in the first place.
Globalization is one of the best things that has ever happened to humanity.
It allows whoever is willing to understand the peoples of the world share way more than what makes them different. Globalization, specially through the internet, but trade as whole, is my personal bet on what could "end all wars". In fact it is the first necessary step for the philosophical parts of the communist manifesto that are salvageable, the parts about the global coalition of common peoples working on shared goals and with similar baseline prosperity.
It is only good if you take a short-term, human-supremacist view of the world. If you consider all life to have worth independent of its value to humanity, then globalization is a horror. And then globalization and the industrial society is the cause of climate change, so it's only good in the short-term.
If by "short-term" you mean "until we stop killing each other in massive wars" (I doubt we can eliminate individual murder), I guess I agree, but by my estimation that will take several centuries at least. If by short term you mean before that, I doubt that we can agree. I'm talking about something that to me is already so far in the future that it was strange to hear "short-term" as a response to that argument!
Regarding human-supremacist view, I hadn't seen that expression before but if I interpret it correctly, I would say that describes a great big majority of the world population and I believe anyone would have a really hard time making this case to anyone on the street. I respect the moral purity in a way, but I think it's wildly impractical to call people around you human-supremacists, when like I said we are still not totally in agreement that things like wars should not happen. We say we do but there's never not been wars in our history. I don't know man, I feel like you're too deep in this rabbithole of morality to be able to have a normal discussion about getting a lightbulb at the local store when you start calling other people human-supremacists. But I do enjoy the banter!
Well, when I see people dump their shit into the homes of animals, then I think that comes from an attitude of human supremacy. When I see pristine forests cut down for profit but laws protecting the homes of people, that's human supremacy.
My goal is not to get most people to like me, or agree with my views. I fully acknowledge that I am a fundamentalist in the sense that I have a few axioms (all life is equal and technology must be regressed) and I have a zero compromise policy on that. Of course, unfortunately, to make a living I must participate in some of our atrocities.
I don't think it's necessary either, that I conform and discuss as others. There is no shortage of conformists. Either our destructive ways will stop, in which case I am working to bring them down through my writing, or I will fail. It's something I believe in and nothing will change that.
You have probably never in your whole life been to a forest that's more than a few hundred years old. Even the Amazon was largely managed by humans with fire prior to about the 15th-16th century.
> technology must be regressed
This is a morally deranged axiom. The life-giving benefits of so many technologies can't be overstated.
It is a bad thing. And you say it like it's a dichotomy.
And I could certainly get most of the comforts of modern life with 5% of the force of globalization. House, food, bed, some reading material, etc. I don't really care for technology, and I use it because it's part of my work and livelihood. BUT, I could easily be just as happy living a simpler life.
Believe me, I've already thought about it. I could be pretty much as comfortable with WAY less global trade. Most people buy way too much clothes, use way too much technology, none of which makes life more comfortable.
> Hell, without globalization you wouldn't even be able to do your job, where do you think your Nikon's, Canon's and Sony's come from?
(A) My point is that if there were other forms of labor, I wouldn't be less comfortable.
(B) Again, I'm arguing for a reduction in global trade, not an outright ban. My point is that it needs to be reduced.
Is it hypocritical to complain about your government even though they make the country that you live in? Of course, I'm using the resources I have, but I could be equally comfortable in a different world. My argument is that our current world is not necessary and not optimal.
Please get off the internet then, destroy your computer and go live on a farm. I don't say this to be an antagonist but it is what you yourself is suggesting others do.
I am not advocating for a simpler life off grid. If I were, I would disconnect now. I am advocating for the destruction of technology because it destroys nature. And sometimes, you need to use the master's tools to dismantle the master's house.
> BUT, I could easily be just as happy living a simpler life
Put your money or your comfort where your mouth is.
> if there were other forms of labor, I wouldn't be less comfortable.
Yes you would be. My grand parents all farmed and my grandfather was born in a cabin with a dirt floor and no electricity. His mother died in child birth, which was common at the time. He lost siblings to disease. His life was brutally difficult.
Let's face it, you're a math PHD and a photographer, you aren't made of the same stuff as people who clawed potatoes from the ground to avoid starvation. You have no clue what that actually means and you come here to lecture us about the comforts you yourself cling to. It's disgusting.
More false dichotomies. Technophiles love them. The choice isn't just between modern global capitalism and a dirt floor. It's just that you have a strong emotional attachment to technology and can't see a way out.
It isn't an emotional attachment, I just clearly see that lots of technologies lean on one another and you can't easily pick an choose which ones to abandon and the clock simply does not roll backwards. Every material good that isn't made of material near at hand relies on trade and specialized skills. The humble pencil is shockingly complicated to produce, as you can see in the 1958 essay "I, Pencil". If you want something truly useful to a life above meager dirt-bound poverty like say antibiotics you need big supply chains, complicated machinery, and packaging that in and of itself requires its own inputs and machinery. It's all related.
Your anti-humanist rants are frankly disgusting and morally revolting. Also, who goes around calling themselves doctor? Skimming you substack, I'm really impressed by the inability of a mathematician to string together logical arguments, "Five myths about technology" might be the most sophomoric and poorly argued blog post I've ever read arguing against technology.
For example, your claims that "Technology, in other words, grows and feeds on the medium of global humanity" is totally unsupported by your argument and fails in its basic understanding of peoples' revealed preferences. You argue by simple example, but fail to come up with anything more convincing than whatsapp usage in Brazil or cars in general. It's lazy writing and lazy thinking. Waving away cures and treatments for rare diseases by saying "such people are in difficult situations due to modern technology" is beyond foolish. You could name dozens of genetic hereditary diseases that have laways existed that were a death sentence two generations ago. Type 1 diabetes comes to mind.
Thank you for your input. You're right, and one day I hope to be elevated to your level of rationality and logical thinking. It's an honour to receive input from someone like you.
This is a common sentiment especially in Germany, but Hannah Richie in Not the End of the World shows multiple studies where the impact of CO₂ from transport is negligible for most foods. Other factors like what we decide to eat play a much greater role.
Your plastic example is a reasonable example, but I could also counter that if plastic is the problem then locally isn't necessarily more sustainable. Local farmers can also wrap their products in plastic. In the end, the plastic is there to increase the shelf life. Even most local products will need to have a shelf life of a few weeks. It's unreasonable to demand farmers stop batching their produce and instead demand they carry a few apples to the market each day.
Plastic SIGNIFICANTLY reduces waste. Freakanomics also pointed out that locally grown can have worse carbon footprint than food shipped around the world.
It's clearly not as black and white as you paint it. Local production uses the same materials that global production uses due to pricing. As long as transportation is cheaper than local production this will stay the same due to simple economics.
Also accountability is the same there, shops just buy their material regardless of working conditions and whatsoever. At least companies can be regulated based off of that.
The error is too systematic to say "just produce local".
To add to this, local production means that money can be moving through local financial institutions, with larger balances, which provides more liquidity to the community.
Those financial institutions hire local people. Other local businesses use the same financial institutions.
It's not about "simple economics". This isn't a supply and demand curve. It's about what a higher cash flow/economic output can mean for the subjective quality of life in a community:
- More jobs
- Higher wages
- Improved public services (schools, roads, healthcare)
- Increased property values
Tons of people in these comments talking about the shitty rural experience while seeming to miss the irony in "big cities are so much better" -- big cities started as small cities.
It's a start. As I always say, practices such as encouraging at least _local involvement_ is a start. Of course, another necessary step is revolution to bring down large companies.
The products sold in local stores are never produced locally. It's national or international products, just like on Amazon.
Buying from local stores pays the salaries of local salesmen, that is a benefit for the community. But wouldn't the community benefit better if they did a job that was needed instead?
local production happens in China though. if you live anywhere else, most of the stuff you can buy off Amazon was made in China. the local shops will ultimately buy it from China too.
Your ideas of how the world work are just patently false. A lot of local farms use large amounts of plastic everyday, its quite common to use plastic sheets to cover the ground when planting. You think you would know they are just dumping it into the pit on their land?
Global trade is one of the best things to happen to the world, it has improved the lives of many. All your advocating for is going back to a time which you did not live it but you romanticize. I suspect it was not as romantic as you make it out to be.
Yes, minimum wage jobs for the locals, most of the profit goes to Bezos.
When you shop at locally-owned stores the money goes to a local small business owner, truly staying local.
Look up how walmart used to destroy small town economies by bankrupting all the local businesses and converting all those previously middle-class shop owners into minimum wage jobs at walmart.
Most of the profit is distributed to a wide variety of shareholders in the form of rising share prices, reflected in things like retirement accounts. In other words, a lot of that profit goes to grandmas across the country with their money in a Vanguard retirement fund. Including grandmas in your local community.
And you really think the local shopowner kept all the profit in their community? E.g. they didn't send their kids to college in another state? Or build a house with materials sourced from all over the country?
It's a whole lot more complicated than you seem to think.
> And you really think the local shopowner kept all the profit in their community? E.g. they didn't send their kids to college in another state?
Imagine spending money and having that money allow people in your local community to afford college.
Then imagine thinking that’s a bad thing.
Obviously it’s complicated, but the gist is longer money stays in a local area, the better off that area is going to be.
It’s better for money to leave my town so that my neighbor’s kid could go to college than it is for me to get two day shipping on a new game console.
A pathological case could be made that every dollar that you keep in town is a dollar someone spends outside of the town.
That’s a valid argument in theory, but in reality that doesn’t happen.
People go to local businesses and spend money. Local bars, specialty markets, farmers markets, etc.
GP definitely did not say he thinks having people in the local community afford college is a bad thing. That's quite a straw man. Their point about the money quickly leaving the local economy is valid. If the shop owner is making a reasonable wage at the end of the day, then I think the local effect is good. Doubly so if they employ people from the local area. However, if the shop owner is getting rich and most of those profits are going into a fat bank account, then it makes no difference to the local economy. If helping the local economy is really your goal, I think there are much more efficient ways.
That said, I do mostly agree with you. Where we might differ is that I don't accept paying significant markup to shop local. If an item I want is available locally and is close to the same price as online, I will go local every time for exactly the reasons you mention: to help the local economy. But I have a low tolerance for The outrageous markup that most Small shops insist on applying. In my opinion, those shops probably should go out of business by being non-competitive. That would open up some room for a less greedy retailer to come and be more of a service to the local community.
> if the shop owner is getting rich and most of those profits are going into a fat bank account, then it makes no difference to the local economy
While arguably not ideal I would also argue that is still better than the same profits being captured by an increasingly centralized corporation many states or countries away.
Local millionaires using a bank will incentivize that bank keeping branches open in town, which can help other locals more easily maintain savings accounts. I personally make a point to use at least one locally incorporated bank for similar reasons.
Even something frivolous like a local millionaire buying a powerboat stimulates the economy because the infrastructure that is required to maintain that keeps a demand for other jobs open and keeps money flowing.
Now I’m not saying powerboats are intrinsically good. All I’m saying is that if someone is going to buy one with the profit captured from running a business selling eg home goods, it’s better for a local economy for a local to do it vs a Bay Area Bezos a thousand miles away.
You seem to have missed my point entirely. I'm not saying that's a bad thing -- but I'm saying that by your logic, you seem to think it is.
You're looking at money like it's some kind of zero-sum thing that ought to be hoarded by every local community. You say:
> but the gist is longer money stays in a local area, the better off that area is going to be
That is contrary to all standard economic theories of free trade. The entire engine of economic growth is that when communities trade between each other, everyone's standard of living goes up.
The economy theory you seem to be promoting is what is known as mercantilism [1], which has been thoroughly discredited.
Circulating money broadly is a good thing. You don't need to worry about it leaving your local area, because it comes back according to whatever goods and services you produce! You don't need to hoard it locally.
> it comes back according to whatever goods and services you produce
Extractive industry like Amazon kill the local producers and siphon the money out of smaller areas and concentrate it in richer areas. When there are no local producers or wealth left, what is there to circulate or trade?
Amazon is an Internet-myelinated version of the Wal-Mart effect, with more packaging waste.
> When there are no local producers or wealth left, what is there to circulate or trade?
If that were true, then sure it would be a problem. But I don't know of many communities in the US where there are literally no jobs, nothing being produced at all. Where economic activity is zero.
Some jobs go away and new ones arise. And remote work makes it easier than ever for jobs to move from cities to smaller areas.
Can you really show that Amazon has had a net effect of shifting wealth "out of smaller areas" and into richer ones? Especially when you consider the amount of money it saves people in smaller areas, which makes them more wealthy than they would be otherwise?
I cannot. I am operating on an assumption that each dollar that goes to Amazon vs a local producer is an opportunity cost for the community’s long-term wealth. Saving a few bucks here and there on individual purchases seems like short-term thinking and small potatoes. Scaled up, that is what lead to rust belt decay after offshoring so much manufacturing. I know a lot of ink has been spilled on the effects of walmart and dollar stores on local economies, but I will also admit that I have not done any legwork to vet the hypotheses or conclusions, or if I have, I’ve forgotten and wouldn’t be able to produce any citations. As far as I can get in systems thinking with the initial conditions I know, which is assuredly a small subset of the totality of reality, the concentration of ability to produce and purchasing power is dangerous for those in the leaf nodes. I’m always interested to see more data proving me more right right or wrong on this.
- market diversity matters, and we have a more functional market with many smaller actors
- similarly, a smaller local actor is more accountable for their behavior
- efficiency comes mostly from cutting things, some of which mattered (eg, individual buyers at companies do more due diligence on the product than Amazon)
- it’s better that every community have a local moderately rich person than one super rich person nationally, eg, in terms of charity to your community
- politics remains local and hence tractable
- smaller organizations have less of a “frozen middle”, which creates numerous problems with national scale organizations
There’s probably more reasons if I really stopped to think about it.
> you just don't like someone doing it more efficiently
For some value of "more efficiently". I mean if the most efficient way to work is to have delivery drivers pee in a bottle and warehouse workers develop RSIs, who am I to complain? Someone else's dignity is a small price to pay in order to get a 3% rebate on some commodity.
Of course I have, but I also don’t have much choice.
I mitigated it by having my first smartphone last 12 years, and I am now using the company-provided one in order to avoid a second buy. Not ideal, I’ll admit. I hope that, by the time I need a change, I can use a pinephone and convince my company that I only need a rsa otp or a yubikey.
But is that really related to the thread?
> At least in the USA we have some semblance of a Labor Department etc...
Any local alternative to amazon will also have it, and less execs/lawyers whose only job is to make them irrelevant.
When you spend money at businesses which are owned by people that live in your community, more of that money continues to circulate in your area. It's better for the local economy, if only marginally, and therefore better for you.
This is more important for businesses that produce and capture a larger amount of value, like locally owned restaurants vs corporate owned chains, but any little bit helps at least a little.
(Of course if you're a rootless corporate mercenary who goes wherever work takes you, with no long-term stake in the place you live, then it doesn't matter at all.)
It's less true in retail (of non locally made goods), here the margins are in the supply contract (think the volume discounts on alibaba or Sam's club).
It's likely that a mega retailer like Walmart generates this margin in their supply chain, bulk land/space and pays out, in total more via wages and benefits (particular possible with the scale of healthcare costs and benefits programs like scholarships)
This is an interesting take. I'm not sure it's true but I will look it up. My knee-jerk reaction is that most large purchases already siphon your money away (home, car, travel), and overthinking where to buy a random small object for the house makes no difference, but I hadn't considered the locality of money circulation!
Amazon discusses that every dollar of salary produces $2.5 of local economic activity, eg, because their workers buy coffees that then pay the salaries of baristas who then…
That money comes from many communities and is distributed to a handful; and I think it would be interesting to quantify the loss of economic activity from Amazon moving money out of a community.
Honestly it's interesting to me that this is a novel take to you. I believe it is a generally understood, if not acted on, principle.
Money sent off to Detroit or Japan for your car is as good as lost to your community, but as I said even a small amount of money spent locally will help your local community a small amount, which is more than none. Even eating at a locally owned McDonald's franchise is slightly better than eating at a corporate owned store. That difference is probably too small to be worth looking up who owns a McDonalds, but if the choice is between McDonalds or some local diner then it doesn't require any time spent looking it up.
> it is a generally understood, if not acted on, principle
I think you'd be surprised to realize how much that's not actually the case.
If you google the "Preston model", you'll find a lot of material waxing lyrical about the government of a lone city in England that actually dared to follow that principle in their procurement strategies. They are doing well, but the fact that it feels revolutionary for mainstream sensibilities shows that those principles are still very unknown to most.
(I should add: the principle of locality is not always a good thing, because there are scoundrels everywhere. Again in England, the regeneration of massive swaths of land previously used for steelmaking is being done through well-connected local businessmen and corrupted politicians, and it is a shameful rip-off for the taxpayer. If a national government had done that, the relevant minister would have faced the sack; but it's ”old boys” from the area, the national press is not interested, and so it's just business as usual.)
Amazon doesn't have any extra power post-local stores. If Amazon ups their prices then the local stores reappear. In some weird future where Amazon completely obliterates small businesses it might take a few years, but it'd take more than a few years of good prices before that from Amazon to get to that state. The manufacturers always have strong incentives to defect from an AWS dominated equilibrium. They want middleman prices to be low, it means they move more goods and make more money.
Although I should stress I like the idea of buying local. If the money goes off to some exotic foreign place it is less likely that I will get my hands on it later on. Better to live in a wealthy community than a poor one, etc. Local capital is local prosperity.
> is doing a societal good by parking money in inventory they brought near you?
Yes. That generates sales taxes. That generates property taxes. That pays for insurance. That pays for upkeep which is hopefully provided by a local contractor. Where this cycle repeats.
> and getting "too" rich? ie dislike of big corporations?
Yes. The money actually doesn't bother me, it's the access to unrestrained political influence it buys you, and big corporations monopolize labor pools and result in worse outcomes for working conditions and wages. Where this story starts.
- local retailers offer better jobs, and often better benefits. The work you do stocking at Menards is much better than sorting boxes at Amazon
- support local repair vs repurchasing. This cuts down on the upstream demand and does wonders for local small-business economies. And again, provides better jobs than sorting boxes.
- Efficiency is great! But what is Amazon efficient at? They have maximized the speed and convenience of delivery. Once stated that way it's obvious there must be tradeoffs. One of those tradeoffs is the shit work. In one dist center, a guys entire job was to wheel odd shaped boxes from one side of a warehouse to another. Whenever you order a big or weirdly shaped box, that guy moved it. Even he hates that job. It's meaningless, non social, provides no transferrable skills.
- ultimately what your parents were talking about is how one chooses to shape their local economy and jobs market. I want to buy from companies that I would want my friends and family to work for.
To disagree, local "mom and pops" often don't offer better jobs or benefits, or meaning.
Historically, in the US, these shops and restaurants often depended on underpaid (often children of the owner) labor, offered no benefits, and had no safety net in case of owner or business failure.
On average, today, starting wages at McDonalds, Walmart, or your "local" Amazon warehouse are 25-50% higher than local restaurants and retailers for rural America (which more typically pay minimum wage). And benefits, a local mom and pop is less likely to account for paid sick/vacation days, retirement savings, healthcare coverage, and workplace insurance (in some cases, a disability or workplace injury would make the business unprofitable + less oversight).
Comparing Amazon to an average rural main street coffee shop or craft store isn't fair.
But you're right I suppose, if your choice is employee number 3 at a tiny thrift store for half the pay, I'd choose Amazon too. But I'd probably want my kids to work at Target stocking shelves rather than Amazon hauling boxes.
Of course a tipped minimum wage is less than a McDonald's non-tipped wage. It's disingenuous to make the comparison. Just as a bus boy at a local restaurant, I took home more money than my friends who worked at major chains.
>- local retailers offer better jobs, and often better benefits.
Is this backed by empirical evidence? I've also heard that small local companies have worse labor conditions, because they're small and fly under the radar compared to multinationals. One incident of an Amazon delivery driver peeing in bottles (even if they're technically working for a local subcontractor) is enough to show up on the New York Times. The same isn't going to be true for some local firm. Moreover, it's possible that "local retailers" targets a more upmarket segment compared to national chains. When I think "local retailers", I think small boutique shops in gentrifying neighborhoods. Obviously those stores will have better working conditions than Amazon, but it's not as if we got rid of Amazon, it'll get replaced by boutique shops, or that most people would be better served by them.
I was wrong to imply "local" since that conjures images of things like a main street one window shop with 3 employees. Obv their benefits are lower.
I had in my head things like Target, Best Buy, or more social, occasional-customer-interaction-based work. It's just those mega corps are local. Also the large retailers like Home Depot, Menards, etc. At least those aren't as soulless and monotonous. By "local" I meant "brick and mortar" etc.
But I'm out of the edit window so, best to ignore it.
There are many replies already, but one point that hasn't been mentioned:
The local store pays their taxes — local and national taxes. Amazon is big enough to evade these, or where possible, pay small amounts only in Luxembourg, Delaware etc.
Amazon pays sales taxes, which makes up a big chunk of the local business' tax burden anyways. Moreover, the retail division Amazon barely makes any money, so any taxes on profit going to delaware or whatever is probably minimal (as % of your spend).
If the retail division of Amazon barely makes any money, why hasn't it been cut or spun off so that the company can concentrate on the things that it is really good at and are more profitable?
This is an insightful breakdown, though I think it leaves out the option I would have chosen. A small business run by a human who is physically present is going to make different decisions that are better for the community.
I have to say though I have evolved a bit in this perspective as I've come to realize that these small business owners can be every bit as greedy or even more. Especially there are a lot who are just fundamentally incompetent at business and try to make up the difference by extracting it from their employees, willfully ignoring labor laws in ways a large company would not dare. A large company is a big target surrounded by people who want a piece of the action and often must tread carefully as a result.
I've personally never worked in such a position, but I have heard absolutely crazy stories from people who have, things like demanding that commission only sales people come in hours early to do unpaid work like cleaning unrelated to their job title, "fining" people $75 for checking their phone while "on the clock" (again in a commission only job), constantly helping themselves to their employees paycheck finding things to "charge" them for, and just generally being a menace and treating employees like they personally owned them. Their ego and sense of entitlement go completely wild. The owners I have known personally will brag about cheating on their taxes while railing against the government, running an atrociously inefficient business that they talk about as if it's some sort of charity. In many cities there's a whole good old boy network type system in place that's no less corrupt and ugly than whatever you want to say about companies like Amazon.
A hyper-efficient system is inherently fragile: if something happens to any part of it, it has a big ripple effect all over the place, because there's no slack anywhere. More resilient systems always have some redundancy that helps them cope in a case of failure. If you think about societally optimal setup, it likely should include a mix of systems, from very efficient to very resilient. Something about eggs and baskets.
>Is it because you just don't like someone doing it more efficiently and getting "too" rich? ie dislike of big corporations?
That’s such an odd way to paint it.
When people live in a system with millions of quettallionaires and the bilion left are mere millionaires where 1 unit of currency is enough to buy the best meal in town with all towns in the world equally provided in services, the system won’t see much strikes happening soon.
When people live in a system where a small cake is growing at a slow rate and a few hundreds people are cornering always more of it at an accelerating rate, all the more when the extraction rate of the cake is known to exceed the cake regeneration rate, the system is well on its road for repeated strikes or even bloody social movements.
Ok, these allegories are two possible points in a spectrum. Which scenario is most likely to be closest to the world as its perceived by most people out there?
People don’t love or hate big corporations and riches out of the blue. If there are given room out of the vivid feeling that their life is a day to day struggle to survive, most people can perfectly demonstrate nuances in their judgment.
For me it’s that last one and also wanting more of my money to flow through my community. I don’t want to live in a world where 10 trillionaires control everything. I already tried to avoid Amazon but Bezos blocking the Post from endorsing a political candidate as we descend into extreme oligarchy was the last straw.
Given that Bezos has announced plans to donate $1M to Trump’s inaugural fund, supporting local businesses helps keep money out of the hands of fascists.
It's because the absolute centralization of business in one entity is almost indistinguishable from Communism. For now it may appear that Amazon is cheaper/more convenient, but in the long run this type of monopoly leads to worse products and services.
"All the downsides"?! I find living in the US to be quite different from what I've seen of life depicted in current/past communist countries.
It sure seems to me as if there were a few additional downsides in those communist countries that I don't see to anywhere near the same degree in the US.
Under communism, workers own the means of production and all of the profit their labor creates. Centralizing business into a single private monopoly whose profit is entirely controlled by shareholders is the exact opposite of communism.
You're correct that monopoly leads to a degradation of products and services, but that's a flaw in capitalism (specifically the myth of the self-regulating free market ideal that eschews proper regulation in favor of the "invisible hand.")
Is it because you want a distributed network of inventory across the country near you in case of emergency?
Is it because you like talking to someone when doing purchases?
Is it because you think someone is doing a societal good by parking money in inventory they brought near you?
Is it because you just don't like someone doing it more efficiently and getting "too" rich? ie dislike of big corporations?
Like I feel like I should want to support local business but it is way less efficient and I can't really convince myself that I'm not just repeating something my parents also said.