EXCERPTS:
"The way to prosperity is to find ways to serve others by producing something you value enough to pay the price I charge. If I serve you poorly either by making a lousy product or one that is more expensive than the alternatives, but ask you to buy from me anyway, that is charity. That may be a nice thing to do. I may choose to do it because I care about you. But don’t pretend that it creates wealth when I am getting less value for my money than I could get elsewhere. It doesn’t. What it does is put my purchasing power in your pocket.
But shouldn’t we support and help each other by buying local? Maybe. But don’t pretend it creates material prosperity. It reduces material prosperity unless I get equal or greater value from purchasing local compared to the alternatives. But in that case, buying local comes naturally and you don’t need to exhort anyone to do it.
When my neighbor asks me to buy his product because he is local, he is asking me to forego benefits. If we all choose to do so and if everyone outside of our community does the same–they only buy locally in their communities–we restrict the range of people we can buy from and sell to. We reduce the range of people we can cooperate with implicitly via specialization. That makes us poorer."
