Jeff Miller and JGH had an interesting discussion on the merits of buying locally. Jeff writes,
I’ve never understood the Local movement. The people in your neighborhood are not intrinsically better than the people in another neighborhood, or another city, or another state, or another country.
The ensuing discussion conflates two issues. The first is the advantages and disadvantages of global capitalism and global free trade. I’ll leave that aside for now.
The second issue is why we would want our money to remain local. I have four reasons.
- Self-interest. If people in your area keep their business local, your area is likely to do better than it otherwise would. Some of this is at the expense of another area that might have profitted from non-local business. This isn’t a particularly moral reason—but it’s a reason.
- Distributional justice. A rising tide lifts all boats—but a rising tide is a crappy metaphor for our economy. I live in Michigan. If you are living at the federal poverty line, you are too rich to qualify for some state programs. Our unemployment is pushing Great Depression levels. If we can get any money to the state, we want it to stay here. If your community is particularly impoverished, buy locally.
- Strong local economies can weather a downturn. If the national economy tanks for reasons out of local control, it doesn’t have as direct an impact on on a more self-sufficient economy.
- Locally owned businesses are more invested in the local community. My local hardware store can’t decide it isn’t sufficiently profitable for investors and close itself down to focus on other branches. There are no national grocery stores in Detroit. They have left. Local stores might go out of business—but they’ll stick around as long as they can. Similarly, the local business owners are much more likely to know their employees personally and weigh the human as well as economic costs of layoffs.
- Purchasing locally may, in some cases, mean that your money goes more directly to people who need it. Buying from Whole Foods means that a certain amount of money goes to the CEO of Whole Foods who, frankly, doesn’t really need it. While the people that own my local food store are not hurting, I suspect whatever revenue my business brings in will be more relevant to them.
- Buying locally supports community institutions. Anybody whose worked on issues of urban poverty know how important the one guy who owns a garage or a grocery store can be to a community. Having some local rolemodels and community leaders is incredibly important.
