I wasn't thinking about a person on street. I was thinking about the issues I have buying from small local businesses and how much more expensive it is for me with small business needs to purchase what I need. I purchase much of what I need from larger stores on sale and can even return them most of the time. It is definitely cheaper for me to buy on line given the cost of transportation to and from stores in NYCity. It's impossible to carry what I need on public transportation most of the time. Books, computer items, music scores, music supplies are all cheaper online. I miss the great music stores in NYCity. They were fun to browse but I have a much larger selection and cheaper from the web. There are other problems with home based businesses like mine but the small shops are really for exotics. What I miss most are the old specialty neighborhoods where it was fun to browse from one store to the next for special items. But it was more entertainment and it took time that I could spend working. Interesting thoughts about all of that. Haven't thought about it in a long time.
REH -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Mike Spencer Sent: Sunday, February 26, 2012 2:15 AM To: [email protected] Subject: [Futurework] Re: Mike Gurstein is presently dealing with an email nightmare and so is offline for now > 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 a REH> 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/ ^^-^^ _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
