[jwells89]

My experience having grown up in the WV portion of Appalachia is that there used to be a number of highly localized small businesses, but ability to scale was highly restricted.

Back in the 90s my father ran a little greenhouse that he sold plants out of for example which brought in a little bit of extra income for the family, but wasn’t able to scale it up due to lack of access to the capital required to do so, and money didn’t exactly grow on trees out there even 30 years ago (when financially things were much better there than they are now). Even if he had been able to scale, I’m not sure how long it could’ve lasted. Bigger greenhouses in the area ended up being run out of business when Walmart came in and started selling plants for prices that no small business could compete with.

These days that part of the state is a ghost of what it was back then. So many businesses have closed down or moved out, small/startup or otherwise.

[delfinom]

Walmart has done much of the work destroying local American businesses, especially since everything they sell is basically imported from overseas.

People decry the "globalism" boogeyman but then immediately go shop at Walmart.

[octopoc]

I think that's partly a generational thing. The younger generations tend to be willing to spend more to ensure a "clean" supply chain--where clean means things like no slavery, family owned business, etc. The older generation tends to do what you're talking about. This is true in my family, but I've also read studies somewhere that illustrate that this is a pretty strong correlation between generations.

[ebiester]

I think many older people are more skeptical of the companies declaring their “clean” silly chain.