This article was written yesterday and censored today. The reasons are obvious to anyone who reads it. I am reprinting it here under another title. Hopefully, you might be able to read it this time.
Buy Local
Needless to say, I find this imposition on my individual rights very unsettling. “Buy local!” is a command. It is an imperative sentence that is quite different (denotatively and connotatively) from “Please buy local.” Moreover, it is shouted by individuals, who seem oblivious to the true essence of a free market: All citizens and I have the right to freely determine which products deliver the best return for our dollars. We have the rights to determine which products are most suitable for our taste, goals, happiness, and budgets. And we have the God-given authority to reward those products that did the best job of delivering the quality and/or quantity that we wanted ― regardless of their status as local or non-local! The products in most demand by consumers should make the most profits. It is just that simple.
No one has the rights to manipulate our freedoms, or the privileges to make free market choices for us. They certainly do not have the authority to remove certain favorable products that are non-local from the supply competition; this authority belongs to the consumers, whose purchases determine winners and losers.
However, I am a centrist. This means that I always try to the best of my ability to understand the other person’s point of view, which in this case are the arguments that support “Buy local.” Based on what I have been able to learn, their arguments consist of the following: 1. “Buying local” keeps the consumers’ dollars in the local community. 2. “Buying local” helps the local businesses to grow and expand, while hiring new employees in the process. 3. “Buying local” create tax bases that support schools, entitlements, and public funding, and 4. “Buying local” reduces unemployment by attracting new businesses and increasing hiring. . .
Although it is quite true that “Buying local” is quite capable of creating the outcomes that I just mentioned, quite often it fails to do so. First, consumers’ dollars or profits form the businesses are reinvested in accordance with the business owner’s goals and ambitions. He has the freedom to invest it in stocks, bonds, off-shore banks, or another community, where he actually lives. Keeping the profits in the local community is simply his choice. Second, employment in many communities has remained virtually unchanged for the past two years. The stimulus packages by the federal government ― especially on roads and highways, and defense contracts, for weapons, equipments, and big-ticket items, like aircrafts, ships, tanks, and military transport vehicles, have pumped billions of dollars into local economies ― particularly those in the republican states (North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, Arizona, Texas, New Jersey, Missouri, etc.) Third, “Buying local” will not improve the local tax base because the republican governors have implemented policies against tax increases, and policies that grants tax breaks to businesses. This means that local tax bases will become smaller and less accessible to local community leaders. And finally, attracting new businesses and increasing hiring create zero gains when those businesses are exempt from paying any meaningful taxes and their new employees are paid substantially less than is adequate for maintaining the status of living in the communities.
“Buy local” is a wonderful idea in theory. It has the potential to be a great idea in practice, but at present it appears to be little more than a campaign ploy aimed at putting more money in the pockets of business owners at the expense of our right and freedom to choose what we buy.
In tomorrow’s blog I will offer my opinion concerning “What products local community should be selling and why.”
