> Well said.
Thank you, Arthur.
> A sober reflection on the way in which entrust valuable
> information to unseen business people.
>
> You are saying shop local. For food and computer support.
Well, yes, but not as a purely economic strategy. As a stand-alone
specifier, "local" is...what? A number of miles? A township or county
boundary?
The date is, well, sometime before cars, paved roads and
electrification were commonplace. Clem Warren and Daniel Wells
are farmers who live several miles apart. The meet one day in the
market town:
Dan: What say, Clem.
Clem: Mornin', Dan.
Dan: Been thinkin', Clem, I owe you for them oak planks.
Clem: Naw, Dan, what about that shoat you gimme after my sow died?
Dan: Well, I don't think about that. What about that load of
firewood when I was laid up with...
Clem: Dan, now you just wait. How long we been doing this?
Dan: Dunno, I guess going on forty year or thereabout.
Clem: Call it square?
Dan: (After a pause...) Call it square!
And they go about their business.
REH> He's also pointing out that shopping local is very expensive for
REH> a small businessman.
Not sure I get that. Because a businessman, with the financial clout
to do so, can buy goods from away low and sell them locally high? So
if I buy lamb from my neighbor who has a little on-farm butcher shop,
I cut into the profits of the supermarket who has frozen New Zealand
lamb for the same price?
Buying data services locally puts you in the same situation as the
home owner mentioned in the Atlantic article who took out his mortgage
at a local bank run by somebody he went to school with. The bank
manager has fiduciary responsibility to the bank but feels community
responsibility for customers that he knows as friends and neighbors,
acts accordingly. If your data services are an essential part of your
living, you want the same personalized attention that you yourself
give to your own professional affairs, to your tools, your workmanship
or your own health. You don't get that by price shopping, especially
not when (as a correspondent on another venue wrote to me),
Remember: It's the 21st century; all products are crap. )-:
You get that by knowing the people you deal with.
The "products are crap" remark arose because I just bought a new
flat-screen monitor and I hate it. I'm taking it back to the small
biz guy I bought it from Monday. I expect that he'll take it back with
full refund in order to keep my good-will. But if he won't, I'll sell
it back to him for whatever he offers because it's a low-end item and
I know he can't afford to lose money on it. And I'll do that to keep
*his* good-will. He's solved computer problems for me in the past for
a few bucks, well below shop rate for his time. So I may, in the end,
buy a monitor from a big box store. Or I may get the local guy to find
me a good used CRT that won't be as horrible as the flat-screen one
is. If he does that, whatever I pay him will likely be all profit
because he'll have gotten the CRT for free as junk from somebody whose
belief that the flat screens are ultra-cool outweighs his critical eye
for quality.
FWIW,
- Mike
--
Michael Spencer Nova Scotia, Canada .~.
/V\
[email protected] /( )\
http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/ ^^-^^
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