Here’s more Bastiatian wisdom from Pietro Poggi-Corradini:
Imagine
a small rural community where people shop at mom-and-pop type stores
and most of what they buy is produced locally. Such a community must
rely almost exclusively on the resources of its surroundings. Everyone
is employed as to create value for some not too distant neighbor. This
is a very stylized example, let’s call it Independence Town.
Now assume that some highly efficient, highly mechanized,
industrialized, global-scale,
soaked-in-the-bones-with-capital-investment, giant-distribution
uber-corporation, whose name starts with W and M, comes into town.
Poof. All of a sudden, the residents of this isolated community are now
connected with the rest of the world. Millions of people around the
world, Chinese, Indians, Thai, Americans,…are now working and employing
resources, they only have access to, in order to satisfy some of the
needs of the people of Independence Town. And they are able to do that
at "everyday low prices".
Well, no wonder then, that small rural and urban and not so small
communities want one of those stores in their neighborhood too. And
they’re willing to compete with each other by offering tax-breaks and
what-not, so that they too can get hooked up to the globalization
highway.
In other words, the "buying local" system requires everyone’s effort
around you, yours included. While buying "Made On Earth" opens up a
wide array of happy pursuits towards which the local resources can be
applied more fruitfully.
