[LanguageGamer]

This is a tragedy in its own right. Small businesses create richer communities and help stave off cultural homogeneity. They can be a source of pride for locals. They help de-centralize economic power. I hope we can find a way to rebuild what's being lost here.

[tluyben2]

Are you buying only local? As I agree with you, most people I know just order from Amazon even though the local places deliver too (the owners often drive themselves; or their children). Or, if not a Covid spot, go there ofcourse. Still, why pay a cent extra right? Not saying you think like that but most people do.

Restaurant/fastfood chains are preferred over local ones as well. I have no clue why (outside money, but cooking yourself is cheaper and nicer): if I wanted to eat plastic, I could just eat a garbage bag. But it is what it is.

Same goes for wine, beer etc; you fav craftbeer is probably owned by Heineken, while the local brewers are going out of business, even if their beer is far better.

Stimulating local businesses starts with completely cutting out the companies that own everything. People will never do that though for many reasons. It starts with money; without subsidising local companies by the gov, there is no way they can compete.

[enahs-sf]

I have definitely been supporting my local brewers much to the chagrin of my wife and waistline.

[tluyben2]

Why does your wife not like it? Mine is a brewer, so i'm curious.

Edit: as I get downvoted, let me reformulate as I guess it reads different than I meant (not native English). I am curious why she doesn't like; my wife being a brewer has nothing to do with it.

[mensetmanusman]

Since no one has explained it,

The joke is that he is enjoying local brewers so much that he has gained a lot of weight or has some behavior changes due to increased alcohol intake that bother his wife :)

[tluyben2]

ah I indeed did not get that; weight gain sure, but that seemed a separate item from wife’s chagrin. Thanks for explaining!

[dehrmann]

> ...fastfood chains are preferred over local ones as well. I have no clue why (outside money, but cooking yourself is cheaper and nicer)

Cooking for myself costs me more per calorie than fast food, probably even more per meal, especially if I want it to be nicer.

[onion2k]

There are 563 calories in a Big Mac, and the average price across the US is $5.71. You could get the same number of calories from ~190g of cooked white rice. At Costco prices that's about 38 cents. You could spend $5 on things to put on top of the rice and still come out ahead.

Obviously there are cheaper fast food options than a Big Mac, and I've used average prices which doesn't help you, and I've assumed you're in the US, and I haven't accounted for things like fuel and water, but there's something seriously wrong with the market economics of where you live if fast food is really cheaper than cooking for yourself.

[tluyben2]

I do not count calories so I don't know about that. I don't know why anyone would unless you are either very underweight or very over weight (the latter, cooking yourself will definitely help). I live in the EU and my fav foods are egg fried rice, pizza & curries; all of them are vastly cheaper to make myself (with smart shopping); far healthier, tastier/nicer (matter of taste for sure!). I see a pizza at NYC Domino's will cost you $7.99 with a coupon; mine, including wood + ingredients comes to around half of that.

Ofcourse not counting time; counting time makes all cooking crazy costly, but yeah, it does so with a lot of other things as well; actual eating (fastfood or otherwise; why not a nutrients drip next to your computer?), going to the gym, shopping, cleaning, showering, going to the toilet and most people probably did not optimise any of those either.

[gridlockd]

That much cooked white rice is a very high glycemic load. I'd rather get my diabetes from candy, thanks.

I think you missed a subtle point though: Cooking takes time and energy, which you should not value at $0, unless you really enjoy cooking, in which case you probably don't eat at McDonald's a lot.

[onion2k]

Cooking takes time and energy, which you should not value at $0..

If you're not being paid for your time then the value is $0. Most people on HN are on salaries where the hours we work have no direct impact to what we earn.

I'm not suggesting there's no value in choosing what you should spend your time on, but rather that using some imaginary hourly wage to define it is stupid. There are much better ways to choose how to spend your time than dreaming up a threshold of "things that aren't worth $x/hour" vs "things that are worth $x/hour" because it will always end up being the boring, tiresome jobs that fall below that threshold even if they're actually useful or important.

I know a lot of people who claim they don't have time to cook or clean their houses or do gardening, and use the dollar value of their time as a reason. Most of them seem to have time to watch the latest Netflix shows or play videogames though. For some reason watching Stranger Things is apparently worth $100/hour.

[gridlockd]

You're conflating the time you can use for work and the time you must use for leisure. I have about 5 very productive hours in the day, plus maybe another 5 less productive ones. I must replenish my energy in the remaining hours.

Now, if you like cooking, perhaps it is like leisure, perhaps it actually replenishes you. Otherwise, you might as well put a dollar value on it, because you are effectively working overtime.

Another way to look at it is that you're really using dollars as a way to better manage your time. Let's say you work 8 hours a day, but you put in another 2 hours into learning something new, maybe a side business, anything that isn't just leisure. Of course that doesn't translate directly into a salary, but the expected value is not zero dollars.

[mft_]

> If you're not being paid for your time then the value is $0.

Is it that simple?

When deciding whether to do something myself versus paying somebody else, I factor in the time taken multiplied by the pleasure or displeasure of doing the task myself, probably sometimes multiplied by the probability of the outcome being above or below ideal.

I’d therefore argue that my unpaid time does actually have a dollar value: it’s the amount I’d be willing to pay to not perform a task myself in that time. It’s complicated by the other factors, but a relationship still exists.

[tluyben2]

Exactly; it's a subjective value, not $ value. If it was really $ value, people would behave quite a bit different.

[tluyben2]

Not the person you were responding to, but I made the point in another comment; the optimizing of time for one task over another (as example; eating fast food (in the example a big mac which is not considered healthy by any standard) to save time but going to the gym because that's healthy) seems not really relating to valuing your time in money, but just valuing your time in subjective ways. There are many people who make > $100 / hr who clean their own house. Why? I don't know, but if you say you don't cook because it costs money then that goes for all things you do. There are people who like cleaning, but anecdotally speaking anyway, I don't know any of those and yet I know millionaires who clean their own house because 'that's how you become a millionaire'. But real sense it does not make. They all (the ones I know that is, to be specific) love to cook (hours / day) though.

[Mediterraneo10]

A lot of local restaurants in small town USA source their ingredients from Sysco. While ownership of the venue might be local, the actual food is hardly different from that at chains.

[dclowd9901]

Big businesses aren’t new. Small businesses crop up because people love them. They’re not going anywhere. Calm down.

[gridlockd]

Have you ever run a small business? People may "love" them, but that usually translates to keeping them barely above water.

At some point, the system will run out of suckers who put their lifeblood into a venture rather than a cozy job.

[ntsplnkv2]

We keep talking about small businesses largely because of political conditioning.

Small businesses struggle because people are too poor to afford anything more than cheap crap at Walmart and McDonalds. We should focus on providing basics to all americans instead of getting upset when the pop-up barbecue ice cream truck doesn't make any money and went under when people's health became more important than someone's life long "dream" to become a barista at their own cafe.

[luckylion]

Unpopular opinion: I'm not convinced of small local businesses. Where I live, it feels like "that shop has always been here, it must remain here" without looking at whether it's really still providing the same service. I believe it's fine for shops to close, others to open, or to reinvent themselves.

There's always the argument "the town won't be the same if they're gone". That's true, but change isn't bad, it's just different.