WHAT’S WRONG WITH ‘BUY LOCAL’? (BESIDES CRAPPY PRODUCTS, THAT IS)

A traitor to her people.

One of my friends was lamenting how his supermarket seemed to be prioritizing a foreign vegetable more than its local counterpart. Such a lamentation was in the name of ‘Tangkilin ang sariling atin’ of course.

HOW ‘LOCAL’ CAN YOU GET?

The problem with this credo is when you’re faced with varieties of ‘proudly Philippine-made’ products, from different regions. Do you choose the one closest to you, e.g. Baguio over Legazpi, Manila over Baguio, etc.?

And if you really wanted to be true to the ‘buy local’ attitude, you’d refuse any product not made locally, even if a similar product does not exist here. After all, you do want to constrict your choices so as not to prioritize outsiders, right? 

If only they produced local Scotch!

And to be really hardcore, you’d have to stop buying anything at all. After all, even if you grew onions in your backyard (which is as ‘local’ as you can get), you’d have had to get the seeds from outside, right? That’d be cheating. 

Same goes for your garden tools, hell the very property in which you work, which presumably was not inhabited by your cavemen ancestors and had to be acquired sometime in the relatively recent past.

BE SINCERE WITH YOUR REASONS FOR BUYING

But it may be that local products are really superior to foreign stuff. Then great! You admit that it’s not a matter of savage tribalism but personal preference to ‘buy local’ in this case.

Wow, how concerned they are for the poor!

WHAT ABOUT CHARITY?

And if your intention is to help the poor, then please drop the pretext of wanting their merchandise. You are not supporting local farmers per se, but local people. It’s charity. We should all be free to trade our money for the partial satiation of our pity.

How about just hand them a donation, and save them the trouble of producing inferior crap, when they could otherwise use their time for making things in which they might truly compete with others? Even the poor would find this more fulfilling.

CONCLUSION

I haven’t even mentioned subsidies given in the name of ‘protectionism,’ which is ultimately anti-consumer. After all, if it was to the advantage of consumers to ‘buy local,’ they would have done so, right? To thwart preferences is to harm the consumer (which includes local producers).

‘Buy local’ is ultimately lose-lose, not to mention illogical.