> But Homer, shopping, and indeed all economic life, is about more than just
> where to buy cheap underwear.  It's about the interaction with the clerk
> and other shoppers, about knowing the person who is getting your dollars
> and having some sense they will maintain a store that supports the kidn of
> lifestyle their shoppers appreciate.

     Some shopping is, but most isn't.  Most people go for the lowest
price and the most convenience.

> 	Also intelligent shoppers think about supporting the stores and
> institutions that can support them. The cheapest lumber might come from
> clearcuts without replanting, but in the long run this is very expensive
> wood indeed.

    Intelligence on Earth is a very scarce commodity. 
 
     Depending on intelligence to keep your store thriving is not a
good business plan.

     Most people are scraping along, they live in fear, their bottom
line is the only 'quality' of service they care about.

     Stores owners can sit there and be righteous all they want about
how their's is the better product because there is a real person
behind the counter, and they can blame the boogies out on the street
for the decline in their business, but they are fooling themselves.
Business has gone elsewhere in droves and at multiple levels for
reasons they can't even begin to comprehend because they don't even
know how to use those new modes of business themselves, including the
internet.
 
> 	If you were smart (the jury is still out on this), you'd shop with
> the people who subscribe to your services and give them the space to be
> able to keep you in business.  

     This is not logical.  I provide lightlink so that local people
may advertise their wares all over the planet.  I expect them and
myself to shop that global market also, otherwise we show only
hypocricy by asking the world to buy from us, but we won't buy from
them.

     Lightlink sells its services to a global market also, it is not
dependent on the local one and it would be utterly foolish to ever let
itself become so dependent.  Time Warner alone will demolish our local
dialup access business in the ensuing months after Road Runner comes
in.

     Not all the catering in the world to local businesses will save
us from that ruin.
 
     The internet changes the definition of 'local' to global.

     In the past the isolation of local areas has provided a form of
protectionism from competition from the rest of the world.  The
internet blows through all that and is the great leveler.  Those who
can't compete with the whole world, those who thrived by grace of that
protectionism, may perish unless they jetison the righteous attitude
and stay caught up with the times.

     Perhaps you see the internet itself as the enemy of local
shopping, just as some see Fane, malls and big business as a similar
enemy.

     In which case it may turn out that I represent the bad guys in
this scenario.

     I on the other hand see many local shops as a dying breed, they
are being replaced by malls and by global internet and mail order
shopping.  What will replace them are small home businesses with new
products in information and services and education, also specialty
items just forming a new market.

     Christ, we grossed $186,000 worth of fractals in 1993 out of our
own home and that was about the stupidest product I ever saw!  We
survived by selling to a global market and we didn't even use the
internet.

     If you are going to make people guilty for buying and selling
into a global market, then I want none of it.

     It is unfortunate when major changes hit a civilization and a new
paradigm starts to take place that some people can't evolve into the
new climate.

     My purpose here is to help people prosper and flourish in that
new paradigm.  My purpose is not to protect the old paradigm at the
expense of the new one.  If people from the old paradigm wish to
extend themselves into the new one to benefit from it, then I will be
happy to help them too.

> And you'd be careful not to drive people
> off this list by learning to listen perhaps a little better.

     I have driven no one off this list.

     And I have attracted into my personal space *MANY* friends who
now know that I think as they do.

     As for not listening Ed, is there something I have not heard
except that I am the most amazing bad guy anyone has ever seen around
here?

    Homer
     
> Ed Franquemont
>