Shop Small: A resolution

I've been thinking a lot about the dinner table with my grandparents lately. As two people who were young adults during the Great Depression of the 1930s (I've put in the date, to avoid confusion with the current economy) they were completely mistrustful of banks and big corporations.
They didn't like the way bigger companies kept eating up the smaller ones. Or how the service department seemed to disappear the bigger the company became. The word "cahoots" was used a lot.
At the time, I totally didn't get it. Of course, people at company headquarters were going to boss you around. And of course it would be a headache to get your erroneous bill corrected or your money refunded on the faulty toaster. I was a kid, and used to dealing with the bureaucracies of school and the vagaries of adult tempers. That's just how life was.
But sometime during the past decade or so, I've come to understand. You spend your life being a good worker, often to the detriment of your family. You pay your bills on time. You vote. You volunteer in your community.
By the time middle age comes, you expect a little respect. What you get is unreasonable credit card rates, unemployment (or under employment) and long periods of time wasted on automated "customer service" lines when someone screws up your bill or sells you a defective product. And you get the added pleasure of knowing that your own tax dollars are going to support some of this behavior.
The fact that some of the culprits get five- or six-figure bonuses while you're going without regular checkups is just an extra middle-finger salute--a final F** You from the corporate world.
My grandparents were right. Big is bad.

How to deal with the rage? Arianna Huffington has an idea. (here's the video.)




She's urging her readers to take their money out of four big banks and invest, instead, in small community and regional banks with good track records. The hoped-for result is that big banks would lose some of their ability to loot the treasury (or at least be forced to start treating us as human beings). And maybe the smaller banks would do more for their communities in the form of small business loans.
It would be a nice start. But I don't think Huffington goes far enough. Why not take a look at all the rest of our spending as well? True, you won't be able to find a toaster in a mom-and-pop appliance store anymore. But there are all kinds of other small businesses out there. Down the street from us, we have an alterations shop, a pie bakery, a business selling cake decorating equipment, an antiques shop and a bead craft store, to name only a few. Why go to an online warehouse or a massive regional pastry maker when you can help your neighbor make his/her house payment? And know what? These are all people who will be friendly, call you by name and take time to answer your questions.

Think big and shop small. It's worth a try. What else would we have to lose?