I’ve been thinking about this question of shopping local, patronizing small businesses, and whether there’s a civic dimension, or an element of duty, here. I’ve written about this before, because I like supporting small/local businesses, but I’ve often been underwhelmed by them. I find that more often than not, a chain or mass producer that’s very good at what it does meets or exceeds the quality of a small-batch/artisan/independent place, at a better price. (In my experience this is much less true of restaurants and services, and much truer of things like bakeries, cheesemakers, many wineries, craft meat/charcuterie makers, and small everyday-goods shops.)

To what extent, then, is the local ownership “worth” something to the consumer such that there’s still overall value in paying more for less in terms of the product offered?

But I want to focus on that word, “support” and the way we use it almost as a euphemism. Nobody “supports” Walmart or Amazon or the car companies or oil companies. We don’t think about patronizing these companies in terms of “support” at all. We don’t talk about “supporting” things we like or that feel easy. It’s simply the path of least resistance. Most of the time for most people, the path of least resistance is what gets chosen.

While “support” implies an element of approval, affirmation, or what I like to call in the context of small businesses “hyperlocal patriotism,” it also implies a sort of sacrifice or unwillingness. So I’m not sure we should talk about alternatives to the current paths of least resistance in terms of support.

You shouldn’t—or shouldn’t have to—“support” things like public transit or small business. Whether or not you like them or approve of them shouldn’t really even have to enter into it. The status quo is the status quo precisely because you don’t have to convince people to consciously chose it. If the alternatives are better in an abstract sense or high-level sense, we should find a way to make them better in the concrete everyday sense. We should find reforms that make the good thing the easier thing. (Not get rid of other things; create more room for more options.)

Nobody should feel the need to say something like “Yeah, driving is easier, but I want to support transit.” That sounds like putting on a hairshirt and offering it up. How we use words matters. You could say, for example, “Altogether, transit is a better value to me, and it might be for you too depending on how you think about it.” Or “Walmart might be cheaper up front, but there’s real value in having a variety of small businesses in town.”

But beyond how we frame this question, there’s the reality that the “better” thing is often the more expensive/uncomfortable/inconvenient thing. Maybe to some extent that’s just the way it is: no pain, no gain. This is why I say you can liken the suburban status quo to junk food and urbanism to vegetables: maybe the unpleasantness is inseparable from the deeper value; maybe they’re the same thing. That implies that we do need to collectively learn to “offer it up.” Or, maybe, we can learn to love vegetables.

But in the real world, to be competitive, you have to actually be a thing people want. Once you’re convincing, you’re losing. I guess what I’m saying is talking glowingly about things a little too much, too much boosterism, moral appeals to “support,” are really ways of saying, “We know we’re inferior but please choose us anyway.” And there’s an element of that in some of the advocacy for small business, urbanism, transit, biking, etc.

So here’s how I’d ask it: what policies should we support that would help reveal, and help us discern, the ways in which the things we prefer are in fact superior (for some people) or worthwhile?

Related Reading:

You Dropped This, King Farm

A Lawn Is a Suburb

The Path Of Most Desire

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