[lxmorj]

I don't buy that "buying your shit at huge markup from a local shop" is some great boone to a community. It's effectively a tax on everyone in town, subsidizing the one family that owns the shop. There are plenty of businesses that are more local-friendly, but household necessities aren't one of them.

[ggm]

That tax keeps people in jobs. That tax kept social capital i the town heart.

The bigstore on the edge of town, and mail-order destroys social capital.

I absolutely get the prices were higher. I have lived this experience in different times, and short of cash I resented paying that markup in the corner store. But now, older and I think a little wiser I realize that what I did, was suck energy out of the local community. I miss the corner store, and I miss fresh bread from a local baker, and I miss the small indie bookshop and record store.

If the price of these things for a small town is a "tax" then can we be grown up and discuss the tax? I mean sure, you can drive the utility truck down the road to the costco, but what kind of a local are you, if the store-owner is on their hunkers because you stopped shopping? Are you a local at all?

[sudosteph]

Of course you're a local. It's ridiculous to judge a person's involvement with their community by how much money they can afford to waste at specialist shops. I grew up in a town that had little shops like that, but the only businesses that were at all accessible to me was the coffee shop and a diner, both of which were priced competitively with chains. My parents had to drive a town over because the only local grocery was an "organic" hippy place that charged double.

But I attended public school in that town, I attended church in that town, I volunteered at the community center, I basically spent every afternoon after class at the public library in that town. I learned to play harmonica on the sidewalk of that town. I knew the names of the old people and disabled people who hung out in the same places I did, places that wouldn't kick you out for not having extra money to spend. So yeah, I knew families that loved to brag about how they support small business by buying $40 books and statues of gnomes made by a well known artist. They usually sent their kids to private schools and had to drive in 15 min from mcmansions in a private neighborhood b/c as much as they enjoyed spending money in my town, they wouldn't dream of living in my part of town, next to the old mill houses and apartments. (That's all starting to change with some gentrification though.)

So yeah, people who don't have the luxury of being loose with money are absolutely locals - and it's ridiculous to suggest otherwise.

[ggm]

Of course you're a local. It's ridiculous to judge a person's involvement with their community by how much money they can afford to waste at specialist shops.

Wow. what a strawman. Its not specialist shops, its the garage, the baker, the newsagent, the food store. Its not wasting money, its deciding to economise personally, so widespread that everyone does, and suddenly half the town is shuttered.

I was not talking about hipster coffee moments, I was talking about what I see in small towns here in Australia: people stop using the local established main-street businesses, and the entire town heart dies, with people driving to least cost warehouse category killers with cheap petrol and free nescafe on the edge of town.

People who don't have the luxury to be loose with money include the former garage owner. He's on meth for a reason dude.

[the_reformation]

So you expect all customers to accept higher prices because of the community aesthetic you personally enjoy more?

[ggm]

Yes. I think I do. Which is at the heart of any tax discussion: So you expect all local citizens to accept higher taxes because of the community utility function you expect everyone to contribute to

What you're driving to, is that get off my goddam lawn and I drive over the border to buy cheaper and screw the lot of you get off my lawn is really fine.. except it isn't. Its pretty sad. But sure, its legal, go for it, don't worry, I can't stop you. I can feel about it, but you don't care what I feel so there's no downside. Right?

[lxmorj]

It's a super inefficient mechanism. You're better off having everyone save a bit by buying from Walmart, and be able to afford to go out to dinner once a month - instead of never.

[ggm]

The small towns I know, its your aunt who runs the store which shut, and its your cousin who used to run the garage who is now nickel-and-diming. Neither of them are working for tips in a restaurant.

[Invictus0]

You ask that question like it's the height of stupidity, seemingly failing to remember that it has been that way for the last hundred years. To put it a different way, wouldn't you rather pay a few cents more support your community and fellow neighbors than feed the checkbook of a $100B sweatshop owner a thousand miles away?

Of course, I already know the answer.

[savanaly]

I lean libertarian, but I like to think I have a lot of empathy and also to some degree share your preference for a quainter, high-price era of goods. So I'll try to argue Amazon's side from a point of view you might relate to.

Here's the thing: that era of town heart, like a beautiful sunset, is only charming if it's natural. Keeping an inefficient system alive at the point of the gun (for, and here's where my libertarian stripes are showing, that is what a tax necessarily entails in the end calculus) robs said system of whatever aesthetic pleasantness it used to hold. I would feel good being the proprietor of a clean, trustworthy and useful small shop in a town. I would feel much less good if I knew my existence was only due to charity or due to the novelty of having a small shop in town, essentially making me into a tourist attraction.

[selimthegrim]

My local corner store is run by Palestinians who have no compunction telling me in front of the mostly black clientele that they [aforementioned clientele] would “never survive in the old country because there’s no welfare there.” This was greeted during the recent government shutdown with grumbled threats of riots if SNAP wasn’t sorted out. Mayberry and Bodega Cat they all are not.

[ggm]

Oh please. Don't bring race to a knife fight on town economics.