Quality of Life

Local business people make an enormous and positive contribution to the quality of life in our community. Local businesses create good jobs, and they boost the local tax base, which in turn improves our schools, our parks, and the quality of life in our town. Most importantly, local businesses are invested in our community. If you look behind the scenes at any civic activity that contributes to the common well being of the community, you are likely to find a local business person, giving their time, and often their money, to the common good. The service provided by the voluntary efforts of people who care about our community could not be replaced by any amount of government assistance or tax money. Local business people are the unsung heroes of our community. They are the leaders, the ambitious, hard working people who have ideas and act on them.

Aren't the Big Department Stores Always Cheaper?

Chain stores have done a good job of convincing people that they are the least expensive, but often they are not. If you check the prices of building supplies, you will find that our own local Blue Ridge Builder's Supply usually has better prices on lumber and other building materials than the big chain stores. If you buy a shopping cart full of painting supplies at Meadowbrook Hardware, chances are you are paying less than if you bought them at a chain store. It has become an article of faith that the big guys are cheaper, but it just isn't that simple. Part of the reason is that the big chain stores hire researchers to study shoppers to examine which items people price compare, and which items they don't. The big chain stores will mark down the items people price compare, and mark up other items (1). It is not wise to assume that the big stores are cheaper. Often they are not.

Our nation's founders created this country based on the belief that all people are created equal, that all people have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Living in want of the basic needs does not bring liberty or happiness, and too many people in our society still live in want.

Small and locally owned businesses are an important part of an economy that could provide for everyone. By keeping money local, we can take charge of our economy. Any time a dollar is spent, it generates a dollar's worth of economic activity and employment. If the same dollar is spent several times, then it generates several dollars worth of employment, behaving as if it were several dollars, not just one. Every dollar has the potential to generate benefits several times its face value.

If you give your dollars to a chain store, then that money leaves our community and we benefit from it very little. If you spend your money at a locally owned business, then that money is more likely to be spent again and again in the local economy, generating many dollars worth of employment. If a lot of people spend their money locally, then they generate a lot of local employment without inflationary pressure. That's how localism can change the way our entire economy works. We can create employment at the local level, and if a lot of people behave similarly, we can dramatically reduce poverty in our country.

Local Business is the Root of Democracy

Democracy has its roots in the smallholder economy. The ancient Greeks, Romans, and Cretes all developed democratic states. In each of these early states, democracy began to develop after the state began colonizing foreign lands and bringing home resources and trade goods to the motherland. Mercantilists traded these goods, manufactured finished products, and sold them to the public. The mercantilists needed more political freedom to conduct their business, so they successfully pushed for greater freedom.

The economic history of the U.S. and Europe are similar. We in the U.S. have an abundance of resources at home, and we procure a great deal abroad. At home, personal liberty is an economic necessity for entrepreneurs, manufacturers, anybody who makes or sells goods. As we have expanded the commercial economy, political freedom has followed. It is not the economy of centralized monopolies that is the root of freedom, it is the economy of smallholders, the economy where ordinary people are producers, merchants, consumers, and traders of goods(2).

Adam Smith is considered to be the grandfather our economic philosophy. He was clear that democracy was rooted among small and locally owned businesses. The concentration of wealth and power in monopoly corporations does not empower ordinary people and does not support the future of democracy(3). Democracy only has meaning when people have the initiative and means to invest resources in creating community organizations that bring people together to socialize, vote, and advocate on behalf of what they believe in. Local business people are local leaders; they are people with initiative and ambition, and they invest their resources in local organizations.

Local Economy is the Bridge to a Sustainable Economy

Local business is the bridge to a more sustainable economy. These days, many of the things we buy are produced in large factories, often overseas. In industries dominated by large-scale production facilities, an enormous amount of money is required to get each business going. The creation of a single job often requires the investment of tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars. We are led to believe that big business is more efficient, but in many cases smaller businesses are more efficient. This is true in agriculture, food processing, textiles, and my types of services.

Why are small businesses more efficient? Because they use more labor and less material resources. If you purchase a loaf of bread manufactured by a nationally known company with centralized production facilities, the cost of that product primarily consists of the fossil fuel and materials needed to create and run the machinery to make the bread. If you buy bread from a local bakery, the cost of the loaf of bread is based primarily on how much labor was required to make it. The environmental cost of the latter product is lower.

The same is true of other products. We are all familiar with the ongoing mechanization in this country that displaces industrial workers. Welding a car with robots requires significantly more fossil fuel than using human labor. Each increment of mechanization, on average, significantly increases the energy and materials required for production while the need for labor is decreased. In our current economy, the low cost of energy and the relatively higher cost of labor make it economically viable to use more energy to manufacture products. Small and locally owned businesses are, on average, less capital intensive and use natural resources more efficiently (4). As a result, they can help us begin to move toward a more sustainable economy.

Diversity Equals Health

There are other ways that supporting local business reduces our impact on the environment. The average food item travels over 1200 miles before it reaches your dinner plate (5). Buying from local farmers and locally owned grocery stores means that transportation costs are reduced. Locally produced goods on average are less heavily packaged. Locally produced food has to be refrigerated less, if at all. Buying goods that are produced, packaged, and sold locally means less energy consumption, less pollution, and less loss of forests to build roads, warehouses, and packaging materials.

A healthy ecosystem and a healthy economy are similar in many ways. A healthy ecosystem has a great diversity of plants and animals deeply rooted and mutually supporting. Such an ecosystem is resistant to stress and able to adapt. Likewise, an economy made up of small and locally owned businesses is stronger. Small businesses that are rooted in the community are less likely to move away than large corporate chains.

Local businesses have an investment in the long-term health of their employees and their community. Local businesses have a vested interest in safeguarding the ecological integrity of the area that surrounds them. Because they too must live amidst the consequences of their actions, local producers will be more sensitive to the health of the land and water on which they depend to live and work. We can depend on local businesses for better paying, long-term jobs. In times of economic hardship, this diversity will be much more resilient than relying on products from the 2 or 3 companies that dominate a local economy. Nature uses the strategy of diversity to protect ecosystems from hardships such as predation, drought, and natural disasters. We too should use this model of diversity to strengthen the economic structure of our communities.

Taking Charge of our Future

As we move toward a more sustainable economy - as indeed we must - we need to reassess our consumer choices. Large firms have the ability to secure capital and build brand name loyalty. It is time that we divorce ourselves from the brand names we have become so familiar with and turn our support toward locally owned businesses.

Local business is a bridge to a world where we more consciously choose our future. In our economy, we have created an industrial system that produces a great abundance of material goods. Our consumption of those goods keeps the economy moving, and has caused us to evolve into a society that idealizes consumption. We do not as a society consciously choose such beliefs; rather, they evolve over time like the beliefs of any other society. Our consumption carries a high ecological price tag at a global scale. But telling people over-consumption is "bad" isn't going to solve our problem because it does not give us an alternative means to ensure our prosperity. The alternative is to consciously build an economy and a culture that can sustain us into the future. Local businesses are our starting point.

In our society, the leap from the individual person to the powerful corporations and institutions of government is so large that people are easily convinced that they are powerless. If people first identified with a community economy, a local economy that provided them jobs, food and shelter, and a sense of self-worth, then they would stand on a stronger foundation to understand larger institutions. If our economy were based on sustainable, locally based production, over time the belief system of the mainstream culture would reflect that. Democracy will grow stronger if people are empowered at the local level. The most fundamental part of empowerment is economic. When we have the ability to create jobs at the local level, we have the power to choose the kind of culture in which we live.

Our nation once practiced slavery, and we moved beyond it. Our nation once denied women the right to vote, and we changed those laws. Our nation once looked upon nature only for its economic value, and now we are learning to take better care of the environment. We take comfort in the familiar, and we assume the brand name products are cheaper and better even when they are not. The time has come to let go of that piece of the past. Each dollar is a vote. We need to choose a future that will enrich and sustain future generations. Local businesses that employ and empower ordinary people are the cornerstone of a future economy that will sustain ourselves, our environment, and our democracy.

1 (The Hartford Courant, "David Vs. Wal-mart", David Owens, Quoting Kenneth Stone, March 17, 1996 Sunday)
2 Zeigler, Alexis L, Conscious Cultural Evolution; Understanding Our Past, Choosing Our Future, Ecodem Press, Charlottesville, 1999, pp.49-50
3 Korten, David C., When Corporations Rule the World, Berrett-Koehler, Kumerian Press, West Hartford, 1995.
4 Ward, Barbara, Progress for a Small Planet, W.W. Norton and Company, 1979, pp.128-130.
5 Durning, Alan, How Much is Enough: The Consumer Society and the Future of the Earth, Norton Press, NY, NY, pp.38-39.