[swatow]

While I guess it's good to provide people with information that they want, I disagree with the premise that Local banks and credit unions work within established localities and reinvest depositors' money into local businesses, farms, and individuals. To put it simply, they often use your money more responsibly than large megabanks, and your community benefits.

Every business is located somewhere. Why would it be better for a person to invest in projects located near themselves, than far away? From the way they phrase it, you'd think that megabanks [sic] throw the money into a black hole, or otherwise use it in some manner other than investing in businesses (which again, must be located somewhere).

The movement to buy/invest locally goes against all of economic theory. Artificial barriers to trade (such as a choice to buy locally) reduce total welfare, and can rarely be justified in terms of income distribution (because the best tradeoff between total welfare and income distribution comes from taxation and redistribution).

[ryanhuff]

If the product costs/benefits are equal, why not buy local? Was there an assumption that buying local is a less attractive deal?

[swatow]

If the product costs/benefits are equal, why not buy non-local? It seems like your avoiding discussing the actual reason I gave for why local vs non-local is not a valid criterion for judging potential investment opportunities.

In general, if you think that some property of a product is good, then you are implying that you should buy it even when it would otherwise be a less attractive deal. In the language of economics, you would say that property enters your utility/decision function.