Problem:  Corporate chain stores are proliferating, centralizing business owners and profits.

Why We Should Care:  Mass-market chain stores destroy small businesses and fragment our communities.  Not only do they have an economic draining effect on communities in which they're present, but they make strangers out of neighbors and encourage us to think of business only in dollar terms, cutting out the personal aspect.  Their nation-wide similarity reduces the richness of our culture and their presence has created a class of workers who have no pride or interest in their work whatsoever.

What We Can Do:  Shop locally.  Find local businesses that offer the product or service you're after and support them with your business!  For more info on local business, click here.

In Depth:  Wal-Mart.  Costco.  Target.  Lowe's.  Home Depot.  Sears.  Borders.  JC Penny.  Best Buy.  We all know these names - in fact, most of us have been inside one or more of these establishments within the past week or so.  These are the corporate chain stores, supersized retail locations that sell almost everything, often at incredibly low prices.  But how about these names?  The Downtowner.  Mountain Mama's Natural Grocery.  Hinkle's.  Freebird's.  Mountain Chalet.  Fizz'z Bike Shop.  Bristol Brewing Company.  The Leechpit.  Fine Line Office Supply.  Not so familiar, are they?  These are names of various small businesses from around the country.  In every town and city around the nation, there are businesses owned, managed, and staffed by people who live in the same community their business is part of.  Unfortunately, thanks to the proliferation of corporate chain stores since the mid-20th century - and to our willingness to patronize those chain stores - the American small business owner has found it increasingly harder to stay in business.  As a result, small businesses are closing their doors across the country, and have been for years.

What effect does this have on the population as a whole?  There are many.  Socially, we become more fragmented and compartmentalized by our reliance on big-box stores.  When we don't share any history or community with the person behind the register, we don't know or care about that person.  They're just one of many interchangeable worker drones, slightly important only for the moment they are helping us out.  They don't know or care about us either - all we've done is exchanged money for goods, and it may as well be a machine helping us (which, of course, is beginning to happen at the bigger stores - self-checkout lanes are the new thing).  Besides the fact that humans are social creatures and social connections are good for our well-being, the lack of concern for the other diminishes accountability on both sides.  On the retailer’s side, accountability for the quality of goods sold diminishes - the interchangeable worker drone feels no responsibility for anything in the store, and cares only in the self-interested sense for the satisfaction of the customer.  On the consumer’s side, accountability for continued business diminishes - there is no sense of loyalty to the store, no personal relationship to uphold.  Contrast this with the traditional corner store; the workers know who you are, the owner is often present and working side-by-side with the employees, and at least a certain level of pride or responsibility is present.  The store depends on you to continue your patronage, and thus tries hard to keep you satisfied.

The stifling similarity of chain stores across the country contributes to the dumbing-down of our culture.  There is something wrong with the ability to be inside a store and have no idea where you are - the inside of a Wal-Mart or Home Depot looks precisely the same whether you're in New York City or Texas or California.  This boring predictability separates us from the unique qualities of every location, geographical, social, and cultural.  Instead of recognizing every town for the individual community it is - and thereby recognizing the inhabitants as individuals - chain stores create an Everytown environment, a typical strip-mall idiocy, where everything looks the same regardless of where you are.  When the backdrop looks the same everywhere, people are more easily regarded as part of that backdrop, and lose the individuality that brings importance.  In contrast, more traditional business districts are full of idiosyncrasies that stimulate recognition of individuality, conversation, caring, and the imagination.

Working for a corporate chain is a great way to lose all caring for your work.  Since our work is what most of us do with most of our time, losing caring for it is to put ourselves on the fast track to general burnout and despair.  As a chain-store employee, you are regarded as nothing more than a number, a number that fills gaps in the schedule, a number that receives a check for as little as possible, a number that is dispensable and easily replaceable.  When you work for a small business, however, you are a person.  You matter to your employer - they depend on you to keep them up and running, and you depend on them for your livelihood.  This close symbiotic relationship often becomes the basis for friendship or at least a more personal level of caring between you and your employer as individuals.  Much of the time this sort of employment leads to a personal sense of responsibility and caring for your work, which makes for a purposeful, contented individual.  This holds true for the small business owner as well - when the business is yours, you are absolutely invested in it and will maintain high sense of purpose.

Centralized business is, in the end, mostly a very good way of funneling profits from a broad base of consumers to a very few people at the top of the corporate ladder.  In contrast with a network of small businesses, where wealth is spread much more evenly across the citizenry, centralized business widens the divide between the rich and poor.  The rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer, and the most heartbreaking part is that the rich are getting rich precisely because the poor continue to support their businesses.  The less-wealthy among us must at some point realize that even though prices at the mass-market store are lower, continued patronage of such establishments is, long-term, simply making them and others like them even less wealthy, while making the few at the top even more disgustingly rich than they already are.

It has been said that Wal-Mart and chains like it are capitalism collapsing on itself.  This is indeed the case, as is evidenced by the increasing crunch on the lower and middle classes.  It is time to take it upon ourselves to decentralize business, and it is rather easy to do so - simply stop shopping at mass-market stores.  Go local!  Click here for more info on local business.