Buying Local

In the college town where we grew up, many held supporting local businesses to be an article of faith. Some industries (such as restaurants or photography studios) appear to either have diseconomies of scale or skilled labor demands that discourage oversized firms, but adherents to the buy local mantra usually justified it for cultural reasons. Usually this philosophy subjected customers to poor selections and inflated prices, though our hometown had plenty of notable exceptions.

Moving to a major metropolitan area has really takes the sacrifice out of shopping locally. With a nationwide department store, two major banks, a supermarket chain, and a large number of small businesses headquartered in the region, effort would be required not to support local businesses in my new city. My friend from Seattle can claim Costco, Eddie Bauer, Nordstrom, and Amazon as local businesses. (He is most loyal to Amazon, from which he regularly receives packages containing diverse assortments of canned foods, math textbooks, and socks. I would mock this, but I purchase my pants as well as my books from Amazon.) Chicago (home of Sears, Crate and Barrel, Aldi USA), Minneapolis/Saint Paul (Target, BestBuy, SuperValu, General Mills), and Cincinnati (Kroger, Macy’s, Proctor and Gamble, Fidelity Investments) also are convenient places to buy locally.