Flutterby™! : In Praise of Chain Stores

The Atlantic: In Praise of Chain Stores asserts that:

Stores don’t give places their character. Terrain and weather and culture do.

And to some extent it's hard to argue with the statement, in lamenting the fact that cities looking for downtown revivals may be working against that goal when they keep chain stores out, that:

You can show people pictures of a Pottery Barn with nothing but the name changed, he says, and they’ll love the store. So downtown stores stay empty, or sell low-value tourist items like candles and kites, while the chains open on the edge of town.

but I think the article as a whole ducks the real issue. Yes, if everything is mass-produced in China and shipped here in containers, if there's no skill required in the service industry jobs, then, yes, large chain stores are indeed the most efficient way to funnel all that cheap plastic crap from the ports to the consumer.

Is that what we aspire to?

Do we want our local economies to consist primarily of untrained unskilled workers executing policy as dictated in overly specific manuals to bring products we had no part of the creation of into our living rooms? If so, why bother with the physical presence at all? Why not move the retailing to the internet?

When I drive into a town and see a TGI Fridays across from a Cheesecake Factory across from a Red Robin, it tells me that the local populace not only expects no more from a dinner than mass-produced food shipped frozen from a thousand or two miles away, it also tells me that they don't expect that their children will want passions, to learn how to cook and be able to build a regular customer base that they can cook to the particular desires of.

I talked this morning with a guy fixing the lock at the local store. The thing was so cheap that the central shaft had been twisted. We exchanged Home Depot stories for a little bit, but then I suddenly realized that I'd had the same problem with my local hardware store, in fact, even with the slightly better hardware store that sells the high end professional tools and the metal gas cans (imagine! gas cans that don't deteriorate in the sunlight!).

The chain store pulls down quality all over, because those of us who want higher quality are no longer subsidized by those who don't give a shit, who are willing to buy and rebuy cheap crap over and over again.

As a free market libertarian, I'm all for that. As someone who sees humanity aspiring that their economy become one with a little room for those who can improve processes, and a whole lot of space where people mindlessly fulfill tasks that will eventually be automated, I weep.