Passing Town

Local used to mean within fifteen minutes by car. For most of us local is now thirty minutes by car and highway. We sacrifice the convenience to shop with local brands in order to ethically consume. Many of us grew up with convenience shopping that has now overgrown itself. The only way convenience shopping continues to thrive is starving these local businesses.

The starving of these businesses happens when the big business sells underneath them. For example, a local craft store opens up in Middletown. The local big businesses will then put craft supplies on sale. Now when consumers go to the local store they will realize that the big business has it cheaper. This is more sinister though because big business knows they don’t have to have the sale for long. The chain only has to outwait the local business to go out of operation, or consumers to forget they were there. If consumers think a certian business is too expensive they will just avoid the buinsess completely.

This then can drain the business dry and result in an empty building. The empty building became a lot of empty buildings, and then a Walmart was put there instead. This is one way the local businesses can be killed but there is another.

A newer issue many are seeing popup in “local businesses” is the fact they get bought out. Instead of the small buisness starving from the big corporation, the big corporation swoops in to save the day. The small business doesn’t change anything other than their dorporate owners and sometimes this can go unnoticable. Consumers don’t know it is a corporation till a problem occurs. When a consumer faces an issue with a product they may find the policy has change to comply with new managament. A perfect example of this condrum is in The Amazing World of Gumball season 6 episode 26 called ‘The Stink’. The episode highlights the struggle of ethical consumerism whilst also balancing your own cause an effect on this Earth.

The solution is like most things, moderation with all. We have all gotten very reliant on big businesses and that has given them an inmesnse sense of power. In order to move away from these companies and take back some if not all of the power, is to take away our dollar. Show corporations that we are conscious about our money. Sending a messages to corporations, in turn sends the message to the politicans they have on payroll.

When we say keeping the elected officials on payroll, this isn’t directly on the payroll. This is evident in lobbying we all saw when this adminstrations has played hopscotch with their tariff plans. There is consistently, an “average of 13,000 active registered lobbyists in the United States, outnumbering members of Congress by twenty to one” (Statisa).  There needs to be laws and regulation on how these rich billionaires can influence our lives. We can only hope as this administration plays out, we can get elected officials who care about their constituents.