Book Review: Big Box Swindle

Last December, I wrote an article on the importance of buying local for my city's green newsletter. I played up the importance of supporting neighbors in a bad economy, the fact that local businesses give 350% more support to non-profits than do non locally owned businesses, and the value of preserving local culture.

Within hours of sending out the newsletter, a very active and very green citizen shot me a blistering email. She found my article divisive and offensive. What was more, she hated our downtown. It was too expensive and didn't carry some of the items that her 17 year old niece wanted for Christmas. She scoffed at donations made by local businesses to our schools and community organizations. They couldn't possibly compare, in size, to the 5% that Targets allegedly give back to their communities. And she wanted a Target in our town, darn it! A green one, that she could walk to. Never mind that there is a Target the next town over. She needed one here.

I put together a lengthy and, I hoped, eloquent response, declaring my allegiance to Main Street. The other green task force members piped in with positive thoughts about buying within the city limits but it was the response from the task force's fearless leader that made the biggest impression.

"Mary, have you read Big Box Swindle? Let me send a you a copy so that you can better understand the importance of supporting locally owned businesses and the impact of big box stores."

Here I sat, a green bookworm if ever there was one. Heck, I even blog at a place devoted entirely to green reads and yet I'd never heard of this book much less read it.

I immediately logged into my library's online reservation and reserved a copy of Big Box Swindle: The True Cost of Mega-Retailers and the Fight to Save America's Independent Businesses by Stacy Mitchell.

Before reading it, I had intuitively known that local businesses provide more interest, more diversity in the marketplace and I had supported other bloggers who felt the same. I had read, with great interest, the chapter in Affluenza that pointed out how chain businesses erode our communities and ship our dollars to corporate headquarters instead of to city hall. I had nodded in agreement with Bill McKibben when he explained, in Deep Economy, that, when chain stores come to town, the individual benefits (through cheaper socks and shampoo) but the community suffers. Indeed, I had immediately agreed with Katrina, from Kale for Sale, when she suggested that, at The Blogging Bookworm, the book list link to independent bookstores instead of Amazon. And the first ad we ever put up at The Green Phone Booth was for IndieBound, an online cooperative of independent bookstores across the country.

But knowing, or suspecting, that it is better to support local businesses is one thing. Having the marketplace laid bare, with all its secrets and swindles set forth, is another.

For me, Big Box Swindle is the next The Omnivore's Dilemma. It rocked my world and opened eyes in a way no other book has since I plodded along with Michael Pollan through factory farm feedlots and the fields of PolyFace Farm.

In Big Box Swindle, the author systematically explains how chain stores have changed American culture. They've moved us out of our downtowns, into our cars, and out to the fringes where we buy things shipped from Asia, made with toxic ingredients by people paid unethical wages, and rung up by a cashier who works full time but lives below the poverty line.

They've ripped up our forests, torn down our historic buildings, and polluted our rivers and streams as they pave over more and more of the country.

They've limited our selection. We wear the clothes, dance to the music, and read the books that an ever-shrinking group of people choose for us. "The pressure [the mega retailers] place on manufacturers to lower costs has sharply curtailed investment in product research and development." (138).

They've taken subsidies from well meaning but ill informed city councils and demanded tax breaks in return as they bring in lower paying jobs and drive local businesses out of business.

They've stripped our country of its meeting places, whittled away at the idea of community and left us paying the same price for shampoo as we did before - but with a smaller paycheck, fewer community amenities and for a lesser product.

If you care about rebuilding your community, about rebounding from this economic collapse, about preserving those beautiful natural spaces and those binding community places, if you want to have more choice in what you use to wash hair or paint your walls, if your city is struggling to pay it teachers or keep its park and rec classes open, this book is for you.

It is impossible to move forward without truth. And of truth, this book offers plenty. But it also offers solutions. Ways to overcome the big box syndrome sweeping the country. Ways to fight it within your own community. And ways to support those independently owned businesses the provide our country with the beauty, the diversity, the flavor the heart that makes up America.

The politicians have bickered enough about bailouts and stimulus packages. This book provides the blue print for the only one that matters but the only folks who can do it. Together, we can bail out Main Street and get back the community we all want.

Rating: 10 out of 5.
Recommended: For everyone who has ever paid for anything.