As regular readers of LDTT will have figured out, its not big corporations I loathe and detest, its the fact that they ultimately have no direct responsibility for the community they derive all their benefit from. Thats inspite of the fact that "we the people" are actually the ones who are their customers. You see the very small number of people who run these mega-corporations have a symbiotic relationship with the very small number of people who run the government, and the majority which is the rest of us seldom get a look in over saying what happens, except perhaps the opportunity to change the color of the shirts in charge once every two years, and the name of the stuffed executive shirt in charge once every four years.

However in a wonderful example of "we the people" turning the normal order of things on its head (or arguably on its feet) I recently discovered an article by Stacy Mitchell. In it she describes a small town called Middlebury in Vermont, where the demise of a chain of discount stores left them without anywhere in their town to shop for necessities. Some people suggested that inviting WalMart to open a store in Middlebury would be the answer to all their problems. However some other more enlightened people have suggested that perhaps the community could open its own store with financing raised by the community and all the benefits going back to that community instead of into large corporate growth plans, financing corporate debt, and paying dividends to out of town stock holders. The article describes the various business structures that can be used to start and run such community controlled ventures, and how many have been extremely successful at doing exactly what they were formed to do - serving the local community.

You see when a corporation's owners are all local, and the capital to start it is local, when the customers are local, and the business decisions made are felt by those who make them then its hardly surprising you get a company that has a strong interest in serving the local community. More to the point such a community owned corporation doesn't need a private Jet, an annual junket to Hawaii, an entire marketing team trying to lure you into the store, and a CEO making hundreds of times what the checkout guy makes.

When the owners are out of town, out of state, or even out of the country, when the captial comes from thousands of people who have never even been to your town and just want their tax free dividends, well then what do you expect? Well you'll expect them to hire a bunch of people to convince you to shop at their store, to borrow tons of cash to build stores just like yours in every town, build stores big enough to make its cost effective to ship container loads of products in from overseas and probably close down your local small store when its no longer "cost efficient" and cut costs by making sure every employee possible is part time, non-union and gets no health insurance or full time benefits. And you'll expect to have to own a car just to go get milk^*, and spend several hours of each weekend shopping at the mega-mall just to get it out of the way because its become such a wretched soul-destroying experience.

You see I really do think that neighborhood serving retail for more essential is the best way to go, and if you don't believe me I think you should go live in the heart of Paris for a few months and tell me if you think differently. For more information on supporting locally owned, independent retail businesses local self-reliance see The New Rules Project.

^*Well I did spend the best years of my life in a country where milk was delivered to your door each moring and your biggest worry in life was if the blue tits would get to your milk before you did