Why we can't shop our way to a better economy | Stacy Mitchell | TEDxDirigo
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- Опубликовано: 24 июл 2024
- Stacy Mitchell is a researcher and writer at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR), a national nonprofit organization that challenges corporate consolidation of the economy and champions policies to nurture community-scaled enterprise.
Stacy directs two ILSR initiatives on independent business and community banking. Her analysis has helped inspire many grassroots campaigns and provided empirical support for changes to local and state policy.
Stacy's articles have appeared in Business Week, The Nation, Grist, Utne Reader, Sojourners, and many daily newspapers. Her book, Big-Box Swindle: The True Cost of Mega-Retailers and the Fight for America's Independent Businesses, was named one of the top ten business books of 2007 by Booklist.
In 2006, she helped launch the Portland Independent Business & Community Alliance, which has a membership today of over 400 local businesses and runs Portland's popular "buy local" campaign.
Stacy is a graduate of Macalester College, where she studied U.S. labor and environmental history. She lives in Portland with her husband.
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I thoroughly enjoyed this TED Talk and I am thinking about how I can encourage small business right here in my hometown of Upper Marlboro, MD. Thank you.
Same here. I am 13 and want to do Eco in Yr 9 so I can analyse financial and economical patterns, create polices, regulate the market and help avoid Financial Risk and Crises.
The book story makes me want to cry ;___; so sweet.
This is what #BuyLocal is all about and Stacy presents a nearly flawless presentation. Very, very well done and a must watch (several times) for anyone attempting to explain why buying local is important to consumers - not just the shops.
I am an aspiring copywriter for truly sustainable businesses, organizations and systems. This brilliant talk is a perfect bedrock presentation for that work. I am inspired... and guided by it!
Indeed: Small is Beautiful, and Big is Subsidized
what she has described at the start here is the definition of crony capitalism
Agreed
That’s what capitalism becomes naturally, then it turns into an oligarchy.
She is awesome.
Here is a huge problem with many mom&pop businesses... their hours of operation are horrible. I do all the maintenance on my house and do some upgrades at times. So many times I go to the smaller Ace hardware and they don't have what I want. And then they say mom&pop lumber down the street has what you want... but they aren't open on Saturday or Sunday and they close at 5pm during the week. Many of these mom&pop businesses don't want my business. Literally. They want the contractors only. So I end up going to the national chain. I hear that when you start your own company you need to work 60-80 hours a week... why doesn't that translate into hours of operation? It needs to. My personal opinion is that these mom&pop businesses in these times aren't putting the hours in and aren't working smart or hard to win customers.
I saw a show about Sam Walton once where one of his competitors (both having only one store or around that at the time) said how Mr. Walton was constantly working and making sure everything was good for the customer. Popcorn for customers always full in the popcorn cart and greeting customers when he wasn't working on something in the store. Modern mom&pop businesses don't want to do that. Go watch an episode of Bar Rescue and other shows like that. Owners aren't around. They own one, maybe two bars and the owners aren't around to do anything and they are going out of business.
I'm also wondering about healthcare and other benefits for mom&pop employees. Do the mom&pop businesses provide any/good healthcare through their company? I've never worked at Walmart but I'm guessing with their buying power they offer more benefits than a mom&pop. Maybe even a default life insurance policy of $25k or $50k at a Walmart? Whatever it is it is most likely better than a mom&pop. The mom&pop places I worked during high school and college never offered any benefits so I am assuming many are like that.
And product returns... I can go into a large retail store and get store credit if my return is attempted without a receipt. I recycle a lot and so I accidentally put my paper receipts in the bin way too early (before return policy date ends) most of the time. Mom&pop stores don't always invest in the computers to be able to verify a purchase without that piece of paper they gave you.
Also, on government contracts you need the larger companies that can have the capital to get projects going and sustain them (the projects) while the government has times when it isn't getting the money to the prime in a timely manner.
We need both large and small companies. And small companies need to pick up their game in benefits and availability to the customer. Large companies need to get rid of the layers of positions that aren't needed. Both need to get rid of people who aren't doing their jobs well. Acting like mom&pop businesses are all great and all big business are not is only helping to push socialist agenda but not fulling thinking it out.
The book story is an interesting one to think about. Firstly, it's not local - the brother didn't live in the same city, and the reason it works isn't because people live near each other. It's more to do with social networks. Second, it's an example of the sister's privacy being selectively violated, to the sister's benefit. Amazon could do that, except that it would be illegal to tell her brother what books she read. The moral might be that although we want some things kept secret, there might be many things that companies keep secret for us that we'd rather they didn't. Maybe it would be handy to have a check box that reads "let others know I bought this" on the shopping cart page.
Love this! Well worth the watch! :)
Anyone here in 2021? Ah, the good 'ole days when Amazon was "only" one-third of all ecommerce in the US. It makes me all teary-eyed and nostalgic. Are there any questions about why it's even so much worse now? This video has been on RUclips for almost a decade, and even though Mitchell delivered a perfectly cogent and important presentation -- which I'm sure resonates with nearly all of you -- it has only 74k views, and 94 comments. That's why. That's why we can't have nice things. I don't know how much of that is the dopamine-chasing lemming train that is "us" or how much of it is the Wizard's algorithm, but either way, we get what we deserve. Stacy, thank you for fighting the good fight, this presentation was awesome. Don't give up on us, we literally, know not what we do.
Stacy, you're the best! thanks for this.
stacy’s my aunt!
This talk is very in keeping with the principles of Distributism. Bigger is not better; small is beautiful! Back to a society of small ownership.
anyone got links to something about the Oklahoma pharmacy situation she mentions?
How can I cite this Ted Talk using MLA? I can't find the recording on Ted.com
Plus, you can download a Nook app on a Kindle. You are not locked in to only Amazon books.
For years consumers have declared that their priority is efficiency and cheap products, rather than things like community, quality, and a variety of options. So that's what produces have provided.
How very true that it will be impossible to reverse this unless we have 1) smaller federal government and more emphasis on the local level 2) a change in thinking on a large scale by consumers who will organize to make their beliefs happen.
This still misses the crucial problem with the economy: It aims to GROW indefinitely on this finite planet, which is mathematically insane and destroys nature and other species. People like their comforts, so few will talk honestly about the end of growth. They just pass the buck to future consumer drones.
As much as I agree with some of this, keep in mind that we've been saying this for YEARS. Firstly, we said the world couldn't handle 1 billion people. Then 5 billion. Then 7 billion. We find new ways of leveraging resources more efficiently out of sheer necessity. At the end of the day, we could thrive anywhere regardless of the resources available to us.
@@matildahalili8051 Uh... no. We can't cheat the laws of physics. There IS a limit, there must be. It's just that the limits of our planet were not as tight was we thought.
Actually, you know what? We already are in a climate crisis. We already are destroying ecosystems. We ALREADY are going above the limit, and it will come back to strike us sooner than later if we don't do something about it. We're 7 billion, sure, but at what cost? We're already seeing the consequences of our way of doing things, and yet, all those 7 billion people don't even live in a highly resource-consuming way like we do in the West. Imagine what our world would look like when it's the case.
Of course, I'm not actually saying we can't make it so that our planet can sustain 7 billion people. But what does "sustain" mean here? Being able to barely survive? Live in a minimum of comfort? Make our economy endlessly grow? I highly doubt the latter is possible, now...
@@Mercure250 Yeah, but don't ALL civilisations hit such a limit? Keep in mind that under capitalism, when resources become scarce, prices tend to rise. Which in turn limits consumption. Which is pretty neat. That being said, we have no idea what our future will look like and so we can not grasp what we will achieve. So we can't really make predictions in good faith here.
@@matildahalili8051 Uh, sure, but... each time, it tended to... well... not end very well for those civilizations. Am I wrong?
What makes you think such civilizations didn't try to stabilize things when it started to go south? What makes you think our modern market will do better? To which point can we limit consumption? I mean, we can't afford to not be able to buy food because it's too pricey, can we? We cannot allow such resources to go scarce. There are limits. And considering how a lot of resources are put into something like food production, we only need one of them to go scarce for things to start looking really bad.
In fact, recently, where I live, a union strike in the railway system made propane delivery impossible, and propane is important for food production : it keeps the animals warm during cold times, and it's also used in the process that makes grain last longer. Only a strike, only for a few days. Yet, something that seems so small at first glance almost had catastrophic repercussions on our food industry. Fortunately, within a few days, the union negotiated with their company and the strike ended, but it still has some consequences in the end, because some producers won't receive propane in time. With that in mind, imagine what a global crisis, one that won't end after a few days, could do. This event made me realize it doesn't take much for things to go really bad really quickly.
Not to mention, we are dealing with something quite different from what we dealt with before. It's not going to be a local shortage, a local economic collapse like it was for those civilizations. It's the entire planet we're talking about. Sure, so far, we managed many times to avoid a global crisis without drastically changing how our economy and society work, but can we do that forever?
Sure, I have no idea what it will exactly look like, but it does look like we're headed into some kind of catastrophe if we don't do anything about it, and your words haven't been reassuring me. I'm not saying THE END IS NIGH or something, I'm just saying that maybe we need to change things in our economy and in our society, because right now, it almost looks like we act as if we will never have shortages of anything, as if we can consume more and more without repercussions.
This has a genius to it. If we made things in America if we withdrew from all NAFTA such agreements and most of what we spent went back into our domestic economy rather then the slave markets of Asia, then this would be spot on.
👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏
The hourglass of which you speak is really the issuance of money, debt-based money. The Boston Tea Party was due to an act which forced people to use krowne currency instead of the local scrip in financial transactions. Though your recommendation is only fractionally better than what we presently have.
Idealism is wonderful. Corporations own America. Your thoughts will never come true without money and investments.
Empires rise and fall, civilizations rise and fall. Any political and economic structure can be changed, if there is will
I'm 40 years old, and i've been hearing of reccesion & economic woes for most of my life. I began hearing predictions of economic collapse as far back as the seventies, and yet here we are, and i'm still hearing the same 'ol crap as if it were new. I find it difficult to take this subject seriously anymore.
Can’t buy our way out of a major recession? Well we’re about to find out👌
Indeed, it is hard to find examples where a firm is not able to lock you into some form of monopoly.
This is why I am a distributist.
Wow this is really good.
Thank you for posting this, and thanks to the lady who is actually well read and intelligent.
She reminds me of how Americans use to be. lol
With more like her, maybe we can regain Our Liberty's once again.
CofCC dottorgg
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How does this answer the question though
great talk, but don't be naive the system has to come down before something better can replace it, isn't it strange this feels like the weimar republic period in Germany..take it from there and you can understand what is really going on.
JeffreyJames Halvorson: Boston University School of Public Health study in 2002 found prescription drug prices in North Dakota were 6% below the US average. More recent data in our 2009 report, "The Benefits of North Dakota's Pharmacy Ownership Law," is from the National Association of Chain Drug Stores: The Chain Pharmacy Industry Profile, reporting average drug prices 9-14% lower in ND in 2005-2007.
Bottom line, government has to stop ruling for the big guys against the little guys. The big guys end up making the rules in Washington, and the little guys can only be found on juries, which, oh surprise, are only given 2% of cases to rule on... That means that the big guys get to decide 98% of cases. And what we all just refuse to see is that behind every ruling, every law, is the threat of prison backed up by State guns. That is how things get lopsided...
Socialists are no more willing to let juries work than are pork fed capitalists. Socialists think they are so superior that they have to force feed good things down the people's throats. If juries worked the way Magna Charta meant for them to work, better yet, the way Lysander Spooner in his Essay on the Trial by Jury says they should work, there would be no rapacious capitalism, only truly free reciprocal exchange systems. Human beings are such lazy liars that trying to give to people according to their needs and expecting from them according to their abilities is the most impossible of all utopias. People exaggerate their needs and want to work as little as possible. Do you see labor leaders walk to work from modest living quarters in jeans and lugging their lunch box with them as they give most of their salaries to the truly poor (who are not in the United Kingdom, by the way)? If you happened to, I would still be looking for cozy little accounts in Panama, for example.
The British East India company's flag and the US flag are almost identical.
I would like to see the research behind some of her claims, but much of this seems intuitive.
Brilliant talk! Karl Marx predicted different economic stages that civilization would go through from feudalism to the capitalist society we live in today. We are currently living in the second last of his predicted stages. As big business and the disparity between upper and lower class continues to increase, it pushes us further towards the final stage which is where the majority of people will push back and demand fair compensation for their labor. I believe this is slowly taking place in the form of unions and government regulation. Unfortunately things probably have to get worse before people are motivated enough to unite on a large scale.
I have to write a synthisis paper that includes one of her essays. NO BUENO gaaaaaaaaaaaaa
Tolerated in the UK as well unfortunately. I'd prefer to keep it theoretical, because it isn't about the number, but about the mere existance of anyone anywhere abusing their (questionable) authority. The revolving door between large multi-nationals and governments everyone is just the new evolution of lordship for them, and surfdom for everyone else. Thank you for fighting the power.
Though I think her point was more toward supporting Amazon for books, rather than the device she's reading it on, I do agree that Apple is just as at fault for building a definitively large, impersonal, and at times very underhanded company.
This reminds me of the Old Testament story of how when Jehovah finally rescued his people from Egypt and into the land of Canaan where it rained manna, and God send collect all you need just for the day, due not horde, for it will rain manna the next day and the next day all except the Sabbeth.
It seems our choices are 1) to change our buying habits to support local business, or 2) to get laws passed to change policies. While Stacy thinks choice 1 is unlikely (and it may be), I think choice 2 is much more unlikely.
We can solve a problem only when we have correctly diagnosed the cause. Find the cause and we can find a solution.
There’s an old saying, “It’s not who rules the roost; it’s who rules the rooster.” In our government, the problem isn’t the people in government; they are merely puppets for their corporate overlords who contribute lots of cash, influence them with lobbyists, and sometimes even write the laws. In 2014, Northwestern and Princeton researchers published a report statistically documenting how lawmakers do not listen or care about what most voters want, and instead mostly care about serving their big donors. Coupled with additional research documenting the discrepancy between donor and voter preferences, they bluntly concluded that the “preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically nonsignificant impact upon public policy.”
So, clearly donating and voting are not working. We are attacking the puppets rather than the puppet master. But changing the puppets does no good. We need to put pressure on corporations to either change or go extinct. Fortunately, it’s ever so simple to do. MLK gave us the blueprint during his final speech:
Withdraw economic support for exploitative companies, and
Give economic support to beneficial companies.
The whole speech is wonderful, but the relevant passage begins at 22 minutes. (Search ‘I have been to the mountaintop full speech’ on youtube.)
The real power lies in corporations. Fortunately their power comes from money and their money comes from us. Band together to stop buying from them and we change the world. The people have the power.
Don’t waste any more time railing against the government; the government cannot hear you over the screaming cash of the corporate class.
Don’t attack the puppet; strangle the puppetmaster.
Economic centralization followed upon political centralization in the U.S. (See, for example, Kolko's Triumph of Conservatism). Therefore, before there can be economic decentralization, there must be political decentralization.
Preach!
Anybody watching this 2022?
On this side of the pond, it would seem that o
ne of the key reasons that government policy favours large corporations in America is the high level of overlap between senior executives and political policy-making. When you have former CEOs of banks and multinationals moving into positions of political influence, it's inevitable that they will continue to propagate the worldview that fits their own experience and interests. Why is such a high level of conflict of interest tolerated in the US?
She sets up the case that government is too involved with commerce where the big companies have the legal resources to profit from these rules and the small companies don't.
Her solution is not to take away the government involvement but to move the gifts of the State from the few to the many. How does government do that better than customers in free enterprise? You could do it politically by identifying the beneficiaries of the state by name. Since picking names can be abused, the government bureaucracy makes rules, more rules on top of those already there such as some maximum dollar amount on some bookkeeping ledger. Rules which big companies can more easily afford to respond to. There’s no rule the lawyer with more options can’t get around.
The more involvement of those who make the rules of economic activity, the more they become the customer. And that’s at the expense of the influence of those served by enterprise in open market competition. Who but the big company can most easily respond to rules? They have the most options; they can even figure out ways to look small if that’s what it takes.
Take away the punch bowl, don't just make it so those with more options can reach it.
She makes a GREAT case for smaller government.
Jessme A smaller Federal Government, with limited powers, and more of the federalism and cross-limitations of local, state, and federal government as our founding fathers envisioned.
Seems to me that there'd be little choice about shopping in a bad economy. They wouldn't have much to spend, so they'd only buy necessities - if they had any money at all. BUT! ..when I go out, what I see is paradoxical to the popular & widely accepted notion that the economy is so poor. Shopping centers are thriving + tanning/hair/nail salons, tattoo parlors, Starbucks, gyms, theaters etc. The streets are always crowded with cars and super-sized pickups or Humvees, no matter the price of gas.
why single out Amazon? Wasn't Microsoft already duly indicted on chargers of Anti-Trust and simply walked away laughing? How many reading this right now are still using Microsoft (or MS co-owned Apple) computers?
+Gary Lawrence Murphy Because everyone already knows this. Amazon is kind of new and surprising. There are plenty of examples but only a few opportunities to use them.
The economy is bad, but we can shop as much as we want. The economy is about to collapse next year, in ten more years, or last year, and four decades ago. Right or wrong - economic turmoil means nothing if people can't feel it.
Lies, north dakota has some of the highest prescription drug prices.
no such thing as evil corporation only evil consumers
I was with you until the iPad vs. Kindle comment -- Apple wants to lock you into a monopoly just as much
The Game is Rigged folks.
Poverty means not having a Smartphone, home computer, car, new nikes, dvd player, flatscreen tv, a well built apartment with central heating & air, and enough food to become obese. When these things can no longer be provided by taxpayers to those who we call, "impoverished" or "low income" we will then have an economic crisis.
wall to wall logic....
..suppose that, for the sake of a healthy economy we inoculated against the corporate criminals by having another corporate idea to raise standards.
(We could call it democracy, or governing or rationality or whatever is the opposite of worshipping irresponsible individualism).
I find it ironic that our tax dollars and who we vote for are really screwing us over, royally
Hipster revolution has begun!
And unlike the brits and the Dutch East India Company, our current overlords know that an attack on the Capitol or a BLM march in Portland keeps us from taking on the old story that it is rich against poor.
farms throw away 1/3 of the stuff they grow just because it isn't pretty enough
This is not simply "stupid". It's ridiculous.
Great talk, but choosing the iPad over the Kindle so she's not locked into buying books from Amazon? Now she's locked into buying books, music, movies, and other digital content from Apple, which is even worse than Amazon in terms of human exploitation, where Chinese employees find working to make Apple products for such low pay and in crappy conditions that they commit suicide while on lunch break. Apple 'fixed' that by requiring all future Chinese employees to sign a contract with Apple stating that they would face legal problems from Apple if they committed suicide and that they must sign the contract, vowing to never commit suicide while employed making products for Apple, to be considered for employment. Content creators are also screwed by Apple. When I released my first album, if I had chosen to release it on iTunes, I would have had to pay fees to Apple, agree to a legally binding document stating that Apple would hold exclusive rights to my content with the ability to sue me if I tried to sell using any other platform, and agree to letting Apple set the price for my content and to allow Apple to keep roughly 75% of all money I earned for the privilege.
On the other hand, you can read books purchased through Amazon on your Kindle, as well as any ebook file (epub, pdf, etc.) on any locally stored computer linked to your Kindle. Apple and Amazon are both poor choices, but at least Amazon is slightly less poor of a choice - just slightly.
My choice? Use formats that are cross-browser compatible and are not proprietary for creating and distributing content and use free browsers, preferably open source, to read or view content you have downloaded. The money paid for content goes to content creators - win/win. Well, almost. We need a better option than PayPal, ApplePay, or Google Wallet, though Google Wallet seems to be the fairest of the three.
Just don't pat yourself on the back for buying an iPad.
Stacy Mitchell The only reason you can use an app to buy books from sources other than Apple is because Amazon took Apple to court when Apple refused to allow other booksellers to sell books to Apple device users. After a lengthy court battle, Apple was forced to allow Amazon and other booksellers to sell books through Apple, from other booksellers. That means that Apple remains as the bookseller, but acting as a third party in the middle instead of being the only company selling the book. The books you purchase to be read on your iPad must still use Apple's propriety file format (.ibook) in order to be compatible with Apple software on Apple devices, for example, your iPad.
The Kindle has no such restrictions. Books purchased from anywhere other than Apple can be read on the Kindle. Kindle can allow you to read books written in multiple file formats, including .aws (Amazon's proprietary format), .epub (free and open standard), .html (free and open standard), .pdf (Adobe's proprietary format), .prc or .mobi (both are Mobipocket ebook formats, and the company was later purchased by Amazon), or nearly any other file format, with the exception of .ibooks, as Apple will not allow Amazon, or any other non-Apple company, the right to provide software for reading ibooks on a non-Apple device. In fact, Amazon will allow you to write your own ebooks or download ebooks from Project Gutenberg (free book downloads, both of public domain books and books posted to PG by the author/copyright holder when given the legal consent to do so) in your choice of format.
On top of that, Amazon even gives non-Amazon developers access to the AWS SDK for Java, meaning developers can create apps that give you access to Amazon Web services even when you are not using a Kindle.
Apple merely appears to give more freedom in the form of third party apps for book purchasing because Apple makes sure that you see a list of apps for what appears to be third party book purchasing options, while Amazon assumes that Kindle users know how to right-click files and choose 'open with > Kindle' option or how to 'Open Book' or 'Import PDF' when already using Kindle software. In other words, Apple gives you a pretty show of apps, while Amazon skips the extra steps and allows you to go to the books directly.
That said, I still prefer downloading books as .html, as I can open them in my browser of choice and even 'skin' them by adding another element to the of the HTML file, allowing me to include my own CSS (Cascading Style Sheet). Of course, for those who can't code, HTML can also be opened with nearly any document viewer, for example, Word (Windows doc viewer), and styled using the style options given in the software. We don't need to create an open source book format or open source book readers - we've had them since before .ibook, .aws, Apple, and Amazon began providing ebook options.
Apple IS involved in your Kobo transactions to the tune of a 30% commission paid to Apple for every book sold through Kobo. This began before the anti-trust case filed against Apple and its publishing company co-conspirators in 2012.
Amazon held 90% of the market share in ebooks, not because the Kindle made you 'go through some pretty convoluted steps to read other files much less purchase from someone other than Amazon', but because ebooks sold on Amazon were cheaper than ebooks sold through Apple and because Amazon offered a much higher commission to the authors of those books than Apple.
The link to the actual case goes to a PDF file, which is not displaying correctly anymore, however the case is covered by Wikipedia at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Apple_Inc. The link to the case is in the 'Notes' section of the wiki article, if you'd still like to see it.
It's time for me to go to work, but I'll try to find you more working links tonight, after work.
-----------------------------------------
Update: It seems most of the articles covering the details of the court case are no longer available. I did find a Washington Post article full of quotes from all parties involved in the case, as well as events that occurred before and during the case. www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/justice-department-files-suit-against-apple-publishers-report-says/2012/04/11/gIQAzyXSAT_story.html
Now, as far as the convoluted steps to read other files on a Kindle back then, all you had to do was send the file to your Amazon account through e-mail. Once the file was sent, it would show up on your Kindle with the option to download it to read. If the user could figure out e-mail, then the user would have an easy time of adding new files to their Kindle. The idea that it was a convoluted process began with Apple's marketing and was tied to Apple's view that the iPad was so easy to use that 'even women could learn to use it to find recipes' (implying that women are too stupid to do anything but be barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen).
Wow, this lady is a genius: "And I think. And I think. And I think." lol. Big businesses have an absolute advantage, but not a comparative advantage. I really don't care about favoring small businesses over big or vice versa.
Cashless society mircochipping 666
Unlike most sociologists complaining about the economy and social impact of the economy, she actually has some ideas. But she needs a few more courses in economics to get more depth.
Depth/Scmeth. Classical Economics has run us to the bottom of the barrel. It's all about utilization-maximalization-efficiency-at-all-costsilization that's become a cover for the tyranny of centralization and monopoly. We could use a little less economics and a little more bread.
recycled toilet paper(min 10.30) i hope they are not making paper napkins or handkerchiefs from recycled toiletpaper
This is actually a PEER TO PEER CAPITALISM, NOT "SHARING". Another model that involves money. "Sharing economy" is just another way to make money and can be exploitative to their volunteers, workers and the present system. The workers have to work several jobs to make enough to survive.
Not relying on your tax money, money from government funded charity organization and money donation from people is the real sustainable movement: unlike some of these models under "sharing economy" that rent something in exchange for your money is just another profitable form of capitalism in disguise. Do some research who they took from to start their business.
Not that I don't believe her but she makes many, many claims with little data to support them. I have read researches that equally convincingly make the case that large institutions, even near monopolies like Microsoft and Amazon are far more beneficial to consumers than small mom and pop store.
I disagree with her conclusion that individual purchasing decisions won't make a difference. In fact, it is the individual purchasing decisions that have created the situation we are in right now. If we want to get rid of the giantism, we should stop patronizing the giants. But we don't.
I don't think she is saying that individual purchasing decisions won't make a difference overall. What she is saying is that alone it will not change the economy for the better because the US has a staggering number of laws and policies that hurt small local businesses and instead help large corporate conglomerates. You are right that we need to stop patronizing the giants. We need the people to do all that is in their power to buy locally and try to somewhat boycott the big corps. We also need the people to start getting politically active and start encouraging their representatives to actually represent the people and be held accountable for their actions. Our representatives need to vote in laws that help local business, they need to close loopholes and need to encourage less sprawl and encourage more urban development. We also need our representatives to stop corporate welfare because we should not be bailing too-large-to-fail anything since it is anti-market and only hurts the people in the long run. Individual choice is definitely helpful but if government policy minimizes real individual choice then it isn't enough.
Do want to add that we also have to be realistic and not reduce the size of the larger corporations too much because they are helpful when it comes to global competition. Think of as many foreign companies selling in the US as you can and you will find that they compare in size to the corporations at home. If we keep all our businesses small we might not be able to compete, especially not with growing foreign state run corporations. Ideally more cooperative corporations could form (like Mondragon in Spain) to replace the shareholder type corporation and they would be more fair, much more community friendly and competitive against foreign conglomerates.
I like your take on it. You are right, big corporates can unduly influence law making. We need to watch the laws very carefully as they are made. Also, I think all of us should make campaign contributions to our candidate, even if they are only the least-bad choice. Money talks.
Yeah, i've been thinking a lot about the progress since 1800... the steam engine, the train, cars the electricity, radio, tv, planes, the internet, the recent development of poorer countries. And I came to the obvious conclusion that the invisible hand concept is completely wrong and the humanity stagnate technologically since the past 2 century because of capitalism.
WE MUST SAVE MY LOCAL BOOKSTORE ! from capitalism ! because surely, it couldn't be caused by the fact that book are obsolete forest destroyers... right ? it must be walmart and the governement.
hurktang The point was that there shouldn’t be monopoly type corporations that control the majority of a sector, which stifles capitalism.
We have progressed but the government is working for corporations and not the people. Why didn’t large corporations pay taxes? Something is very wrong when they have that much power and the people don’t.