Buying local

I have mixed feelings about supporting local businesses.

For the most part I support it. For reasons like these listed here: http://conservationvalue.blogspot.com/2010/04/why-buy-local.html Mainly, that it encourages diversity, and relationship-based business. I mean, in theory it's a great thing. You know all the people that supply your groceries, that make your coffee, that build your furniture, whatever it may be. It's a real person that you can talk to if you have a problem, rather than another big faceless corporation. It makes you feel more connected to the world, more like a human, less like part of a big global economic machine. I like all of these ideas.

But, I think it's naive to postulate that in every case a local business is better than a big business. I think giving unquestioning, unconditional support to a business simply because it is local is dangerous. I mean, some companies rise to prominence because they provide a better product. Perhaps they're more efficient as a business. Maybe they actually do provide better customer service.

This point was illustrated very well by an episode of South Park titled Gnomes (Season 2, Episode 17). For the majority of the episode, you hear the plight of the small coffee-shop owner who is being run out of business by a big coffee conglomerate. You really feel for him, you're up in arms about local business. That is, until the end, when the characters actually taste the coffee, and found that the local coffee shop's coffee was terrible, and the big business coffee tasted lovely.

My point is this: In an ideal world, I would love to buy everything locally, absolutely everything. And I think that there are many reasons to support doing this. But, by the ideals of capitalism (which, admittedly, I'm not sure I support fully), we should support the business with the better business model, and the better product. To support a local business with a worse product is, in essence, to prop up mediocrity where it should die like a sickly goat among lions.

Now, after all of this, I will say this: I will always support Blue Line coffee, on 50th and Underwood. Why? Because they're locally owned? Sure. But, mostly because I know the baristas, and I know that they still maintain the art of making coffee. So, their coffee just tastes better than anything out of a super-automatic machine, like Starbucks, Scooters, Crane Coffee, etc. all use. Sometimes local is better.