With Reliance on Corporate Financial Structures Failing...

We seem to always want the cheaper prices and the greater selection and the convenience of getting what we want when we want it. We are becoming spoiled children who do not want what is in our toy box anymore. We want everything that is not in our toy box, seemingly from a great distance from the place where we actually live. Is this a wise choice?

More and more corporate reliance by the people has more and more killed local businesses. The local grocery store or the local old-fashioned soda shops and so on are doomed to fail if the public keeps looking at cheaper alternatives from corporate shopping centers. The local businesses often suffer when the quality employees of that area shift to the mode of seeking corporate money. I was taught when I was young that there is a benefit in supporting local business over the trip to the superstore. That benefit lay in the consumer's ability to keep the money spread out locally, keeping the local economy alive, instead of funneling it out through one or two main outlets.

The pursuit of financial freedom, the ultimate goal of participation in a capitalist system, seems to have absolutely dominated American culture to a point where the collective suffers. Apparently the motto must be 'To the good of a few over the good of the many.' Maybe that would not be so bad if the ones who received the plenty stuck around to allow for the survival of the area in which they received that benefit. Unfortunately, that is not the case, for the most part.

The unfortunate truth is that we fund entities which are free to relocate to save money whereas funding the local business person means that they may go to Mexico for a few weeks for vacation but we do not need to worry about the business person moving there for economic reasons. Perhaps this social stability is worth placing a few extra dollars in that business person's pocket to keep them around for more reasons than simply receiving a given product or service.

It seems like the logical alternative to such failing reliance on corporate financial structures would be to shift to local reliance and keep the funding where it is most needed, keeping it with the people themselves within the communities in which those people reside.

Perhaps this would create an atmosphere of local economic stability. In Michigan, that is something that we need desperately. In Academia, throughout the nation, that is something that needs to be accomplished there as well. There is a lot of financial dependence going on where the State and Federal Governmental Offices become involved more and more as that reliance on their money increases. Some will say that sort of large scale funding is necessary to perpetuate a competitive society. Ah, so the big dogs can fight it out while the puppies all starve. Well good luck with the generational perpetuation of that impossible miracle. The puppies need food and they may decide to eat the big dogs in their sleep.