Why not go down to your local independent pet store, keep your money local and support your neighbours instead of giving it to directors and shareholders sitting on beaches in French Polynesia?
How do you know the local independent pet store is not buying their inventory from a business with directors and shareholders sitting on beaches in French Polynesia?
But they are not offering anything worth patronizing. There's no value proposition. The prices are higher, getting the book takes longer, they don't ship it to me, and they never have a good book in stock. Independent book stores exist entirely as a charity-empathy business. They only exist because people feel bad about not shopping there.
i'm not a robot or venture capitalist, so i'm not sure why i need to exclude empathy from my decision-making process.
but, from a purely selfish standpoint: i get way better customer service, i can do trades, i can barter, i get to meet and talk with people, i can see the product before i buy it (no surprise knock-offs, etc.), my money mostly stays local, i find interesting work opportunities and sometimes referrals
i will express my opinion when i want to, thanks though.
if you have a particular issue, email dang and he can swing by and reprimand me. although i would find that weird, considering me and the other participant continued our conversation on just fine.
Then, how do you know the local business owner isn't, in turn, using that profit to buy stuff from companies with directors and shareholders sitting on beaches in French Polynesia?
If you track the individual dollars, most flows of value eventually, after some number of loops, end up with the French Polynesia sitting people.
That local business owner pays taxes and presumably eats food and uses services from his or her own town. They also pay local people to work in their shop who also presumably spends some of their wages locally.