In our wonderful western capitalist system, people are free to engage in commerce, just like how nature is free to evolve as it sees fitting with it's ecosystem. If a business serves no purpose in our economic jungle, the business will quickly disappear out of fiscal starvation.
Businesses fold. It's what the "circle of life" would call the renewal process. Nobody wants to admit it, but everything has a cycle. Yes there are exceptions but the way of the world is everything having a season. A time to reap and a time to sow. A time to live and a time to die. A time to open a business and a time to retire. Business finds a way to fill gaps and in our society. And like cracks on a glacier these gaps are always on the move.
The food source!
Nature's way is: when a fox stops eating, the fox dies. Businesses need to be fed and nourished in the same way, from the life-giving force of the almighty dollar. When the money stops, they die (aka bankruptcy).
But what if the fox wants to change his diet? The fox is no longer interested in the business of hunting rabbits. Those rabbits seem to get faster every year, they seem to multiply like, well, the rabbits they are, and yet the old fox still has a hard time catching them. The problem isn't that there aren't enough rabbits, the problem is that the fox can't catch them anymore and he doesn't want to either.
Consumers are not the problem in business. Either the business can't get enough rabbits to eat, or the business just doesn't want to catch rabbits anymore, simple as that. We as human beings look for complicated causation on everything yet the simplest answers are typically the best.
If one fox can't/refuses to go after rabbits anymore are the rabbits safe? Of course not, rabbits can be hunted by many different animals as well as other foxes.
Let's look at the predators
In any ecosystem there are those at the top and those at the bottom. The well established and successful business and the unsuccessful poorly managed enterprise. These little organizations form the core of the financial biodiversity seen in many small communities, the foxes if you will. As well there are huge organizations, the wolves, consisting of stores like Wal-Mart, Giant Tiger, Home Hardware, etc. Who will catch and eat more rabbits? The fox is smaller, cunning, and flexible. The wolf large, fast and powerful. Both can catch rabbits, though for it's size the wolf will probably catch and eat more rabbits. If the wolf is too much better at hunting rabbits than the fox then the fox may have to go somewhere else to hunt rabbits or die.
The wolves that come into communities tempt consumers with sweet deals, at the expense of service and quality. While many see it as wasteful to support the foxes by paying more for better service and higher quality.
Then these communities have the audacity to cry out that the town is going under when it's voted in clear favour of the box stores over supporting the local economy. Every dollar is a vote and those who voted for Walmart should be neither surprised nor disappointed when it prevails over the local stores.
Commerce will continue to evolve the same way animals do in the forest. Everything has to balance because eventually when all the rabbits are eaten the wolves will also disappear. When the forest burns down we are sad for a moment until we realize the ashes will nourish a new generation of enduring trees.
In my hometown of Truro NS, 3 iconic family run businesses are (or already have), closed up shop. Some fear that the town is folding because these stores have gone out of business yet most would likely not be able to recall the last time they set foot in the Margolian's Department Store, MP Crowell Furniture, or AJ Walker's Hardware, much less bought something.
Construction is happening all over the town; homes, public buildings, apartment buildings, sports facilities, and more are being built! The town is growing, new businesses are opening all the time. The new trees are springing from the ashes to nourish a new generation! It's sad when the old businesses die, but we're on the cusp of a new golden age of commerce in Nova Scotia!
I say Bring it on! Who's with me?
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