The intimacy of commerce

Intimacy, the connection of one person with another, is an antidote to the alienation that is epidemic in our society and to the growing tendency to objectify others. If we connect with other people so that we can see their humanity, we are able to empathize with them, we are able to recognize them as real people with their own set of hopes, fears, problems, triumphs, and so on—things that in the end differ little from our own. That sort of a connection is a fundamental building block of community, of groups of people who care about and for one another, who share their lives. I have written previously on the subject: https://turn-stone.com/intimacy-2/

Intimacy implies more than just a connection between individuals, however. It also connotes creating caring relationships in all aspects of our lives, including connections between individuals and the organizations with which they interact or are part of. An important one is commerce, particularly the bond between people and the businesses where they shop.

As national (and international) chains have supplanted local businesses, we have lost an important facet of intimacy and of community. Before big box stores like Walmart and Home Depot elbowed their way into our cities and towns, before fast food franchises, convenience stores, and Starbucks appeared on every corner, before national chains sprang up to offer services like hair-cutting and oil changes, before Amazon colonized our lives, before all of that, most businesses were local and, more importantly, were part of the community. We knew the people who owned or worked in them, the places down the block or around the corner. Often they were family enterprises passed from one generation to another. That is no longer the case. Ace, Home Depot, and Lowes have driven local hardware stores and lumberyards out of business. Office Max and Staples have replaced local stationary stores. Other small retail businesses are on the endangered species list. For example, barber and beauty shops face competition from Whatever Clips, the generic chains with hair specialists working for low wages plus tips. While there are still many local restaurants, places like Olive Garden, Applebee’s, and Outback, whose menus are chosen at corporate headquarters, have pushed their way in, particularly infecting soulless malls and shopping centers. Corporate retail stores have metastasized across the country, creating a desperate insipidness, whether in Wichita or Billings or Chattanooga.

Even worse is Amazon. In the past two decades the company has caused the decline and death of many community businesses as people turn their backs on local stores and do their shopping on-line from their homes, with their purchases delivered to their door. It certainly is easier and often cheaper than going to the trouble of actually engaging with real people in their own enterprises. The box trucks with the Amazon swoop circulating in our towns and cities symbolize what we have lost. It is apt that they are painted in dark colors.

Certainly chains, big box stores, and particularly Amazon offer advantages over local business in terms of a variety of products and sometimes lower prices. Yet, that is not an unalloyed benefit. The individual character of many cities has been bleached out by a bland and sad sameness as downtown business districts have been abandoned for shopping centers out by the freeway. In smaller cities and towns, once thriving main streets have been replaced by antique shops, storefront churches, and drug crisis centers as residents have chosen to patronize chain stores or have just ordered their purchases on-line.

A business that is locally owned and operated is much more part of a community than a national chain that is owned by shareholders and managed from New York or Chicago. A franchise business is just another national chain; although it might be locally-owned, its products, services, and policies are dictated by corporate headquarters. It is the local businesses who place ads in newspapers and high school yearbooks, buy 4H animals after the county fair, and contribute to community fund raisers. In local businesses there is an intimate connection between seller and buyer. At a local business a shopper is more likely to know the owner, manager, or a long-time employee, someone who greets the customer as a person and has vested interest in serving that customer. One of the frustrating experiences that occur too commonly in shopping at a big box store is getting help. At Lowes, Home Depot, or Office Max, it sometimes seems like the only staff members on duty are behind the checkout registers. Customers end up asking other customers for help in finding an item for which they are looking.

Some cities and towns are fortunate enough to have saved their historic main streets and protected their local businesses. Those communities are rare, though. In too many places, Main Street is dead, supplanted by chain stores in ugly buildings surrounded by vast parking lots, on the edge of town out by the freeway. Or the local businesses have been starved to death by shoppers who have abandoned them for Amazon. It is telling that the communities that have preserved their downtowns and supported local businesses are attractive to people who seek to escape the boring sameness that is epidemic across the country.

Where and how we shop reflects how we define ourselves, particularly our relationship to the communities to which we belong. Are we merely consumers without any connection to the place where we live, or are we citizens who comprise an organic part of a community? The latter implies a responsibility to that community, an obligation to where we live and to those who live around us. And a big part of that responsibility involves supporting local businesses. Sure, we sometimes (although not always) save money by shopping at big box stores or other chains and franchises, and sometimes we are not able to find what product or service we are seeking at a local establishment. There is another metric for our purchases other than cost and selection, however. It is the health of our local economies, and that wellbeing is at stake in where we shop. Local businesses are not just more closely connected with their communities than chains; they are an integral part of them. They are our neighbors.