FOR:
It was Anna Lappé who once said, “Every time you spend money, you’re casting a vote for the kind of world you want.” What kind of world do you want? A world dominated by a few gargantuan corporations driven solely by profit that have more power than nation states do, or a society where human welfare and dignity come first? Large multinational corporations have already redefined our society in such a way that it is almost impossible to navigate an average shopping run without interacting with them in some fashion. Chicago Booth reports that in terms of assets, the top 1% of corporations dominate 90% of the U.S. economy. Meanwhile, Oxfam found that since 2019, CEO compensation has shot up 56 times more than employee pay.
But it is possible to build an alternative world with your wallet. What an Amazon transaction or a Target run can’t give you is the simple satisfaction of knowing instead of going overseas, the money you spend stays in your community and goes into the pockets of your own neighbors. I work at Gryphon Cafe in Wayne, a stone’s throw from campus. Unlike Starbucks, when you shop at Gryphon your purchase of an overpriced latte directly benefits not just me, but the family who owns the cafe. You’ll begin to recognize the neighbors who frequent the shop, the baristas who work behind the bar and the family who started it all. You won’t be handed a drink through a drive-thru window and shooed away to reduce the turnover time for the suits on Wall Street – you’ll be invited to linger, to meet people, and to build community.
Large corporations are betting on the fact that convenience is everything for the consumer. They build drive-thrus so we can zip in and out to acquire a cup of coffee. They’ve innovated the genius of mobile ordering, delivery, the assembly line and are now actively replacing flesh and blood employees with artificial intelligence. Thank God! Lower prices! Faster service! But one has to ask: what kind of a world are we building when we vote with our wallets in this manner? When drones deliver our packages and we never knew the hands who made our goods, we lose our appreciation for craftsmanship and the human hands who keep our world going around. And despite what big companies may claim, small businesses are bipartisanly popular – Pew Research found 86% of Americans believe they positively affect how things are going in the country.
It is no secret that to shop small feels unrealistic and out of reach for college students, who must scrimp and save each penny they earn to pay for education. What I would suggest, however, is that to shop small is not an all-or-nothing decision. No one is going to read your receipts and cancel you for buying deodorant from Walmart. The art of shopping small is the practice of stopping for a moment to consider, “Where is my money going? Who is it benefiting? What kind of world is it voting for? Do I really need this?” Whether you choose to purchase from Chipotle or your local taqueria is your own decision, but we as consumers are responsible for the world we leave behind.
AGAINST:
I drew the short end of the stick. Somehow, I have to argue that you, dear reader, should not shop at small businesses. That’s right: forget those mom and pop shops, and plump the wallets of the fat cats with your consumerism! This is what I get for writing for Opinions. Yet, as I considered the hole I had dug for myself, I started to think seriously about the issue. There often seems to be an assumption that “shopping small” is the same as “shopping well.” Simply shopping at small businesses and thinking you have, therefore, fulfilled your moral responsibilities strikes me as a copout.
Stores generally serve two societal purposes: providing goods to customers and jobs for employees. Customers trade their money for goods and services, and the store gives employees some of this money in exchange for their labor. The quality of a store is a function of how well it performs those two duties. A good store is one that sells high-quality products at a reasonable price and treats its employees well.
It is generally true that shopping small is costlier than shopping at large chains: pumpkins are cheaper at Walmart than at a farmer’s market. A common misconception is that a more expensive item is higher quality, and therefore, small businesses provide superior products to large ones. This is sometimes true, but price is not just a function of quality. Because of a greater division of labor, effective use of supply chains, and many other complex economic factors, Walmart can offer more products for a cheaper price, even if the product is the same as that at a farmer’s market. It is not as simple as spending more money at a small business to get a better product; larger stores may offer equal or superior products at a lower price point.
Another common argument I hear in favor of shopping small is that it supports local communities. And yes, it does, but no matter where you shop, you support the livelihood of those who work there. Most people who work at a given retail business are members of the local community, for the simple fact that few people are willing to commute long distances to work as a cashier. An employee who works at Target or Amazon is not inherently less worth supporting than someone who works at a small business.
Yet, one may argue, that Target or Amazon as large corporations are less worth supporting. “Big business” as a whole often has a negative reputation for underpaying and mistreating employees, using unethical business tactics and only being interested in profit. And this is indeed true of many businesses, both large and small. To quote the great poet Thom Yorke, “Everything is broken, everyone is broken.”
So what does this all mean? It means that “shopping well” is not as simple as “shopping small.” The world is simply more complicated than that. There exist ethical big businesses and unethical small businesses. In an ideal scenario, I would prefer to never shop somewhere that treated its employees poorly, or conducted its business in a sleazy and unethical way. I especially think that the use of slave labor (a problem especially prevalent in products made in China) should be roundly punished. Yet, it is simply impossible for me to know every crime that a store has committed, whether that be my local Giant, or my local family-owned bookstore. All I can do is make decisions based the knowledge I have. With the holiday season approaching, I have to make a lot of shopping decisions. As with most decisions, there is no simple, consistent solution besides wisdom.