Reasons to shop local first | Hacker News Reader

Reasons to shop local first

psfk.com

11 pointss3b8 comments

The smart thing about this list is that at least to some extent, it frames local business as a tangible net positive for the consumer. It bugs me when people suggest that you should shop at local businesses as an act of altruism or sticking it to the man. There's only one reason to choose any business: they give you the best results for the things you care about.

People don't respond well to nebulous, "this strengthens the community"-type stuff. They like good products, good service, low prices, and a nice user/shopping experience. The crucial point is that whatever the good things are about your business, people have to feel them in a single interaction, the very first time — not years down the road. You can't depend on people subordinating their short-term interests to a vague community benefit that a) won't show up for a long time, and b) only shows up if everyone else in the community also makes the same sacrifice.

Economical fallacies all over, there's a very simple way to measure the true cost of something, and provided government isn't subsidizing anything or skewing the market it actually measures things quite well. It's called a price. If you think that the quality of local produce is higher than the quality of non-local produce though, go ahead and buy things locally, it all comes down to what you're willing to spend for the produce and what quality you're demanding for your money. Here's two great articles on it by Art Carden: http://mises.org/daily/3026 http://mises.org/daily/3059

I smell a chamber of commerce's involvement.

And if you're looking for office furniture, look no further than American Seating, Steelcase, Haworth and Herman Miller.

when i see this kind of thing, in a forum dominated by americans (or citizens any other "first world" country), it always sticks in my throat a little. i understand the motivation (and even agree with some of the environmental aspects), but it's hard to ignore the thinly veiled implications that you don't want the rest of the world to be as rich as you are...

In the general case, I agree with you. With the specific niche of food, however, I disagree strongly.

In the US, supporting independent, community farmers is key in battling the negative effects of the government corn subsidy. There are numerous places you can learn about this subsidy's adverse effects on developing countries--I'd suggest Food, Inc. for one. Buying locally grown food is also an environmental boon, since there's much less fuel burned in transportation.

Indeed. Were it not for the government subsidy of entrenched agribusiness interests, local food might actually be objectively cheap. When you're growing food sustainably, you don't get as much of the kinds of economies of scale that give a $1 billion/year factory major cost advantages over a $1 million/year factory, so smaller farms aren't at a huge disadvantage there. And there's no good reason for transportation or distribution costs to be very high.

true; the difficulty in buying fresh food in some parts of the states always surprises/worries me (i live in chile; we have loads of fresh food, although in the winter there's less variety of course)

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