Black Friday this year?

[iris lilies]

Don't fences need to be more than 8 feet high to keep deer out?

see, this is what I am telling him. But the fence will be 8’ tall. It will have stuff on top tho.

[SteveinMN]

We bought some more gift certificates for that B&B we like upstate. I hope we get to use them next year...

Aside from that, nothing. We've got gifts figured out for everyone and there wasn't anything I saw that I just had to have. We've shopped BF before (though never in person) but it all depends on whether there's something we need/want that we don't think will come at a better price any time soon.

[LDAHL]

Not true, if you think about it in terms of direct support of your neighbors as opposed to supporting major multinational corporations. I always tell my kids when they ask what I want for Christmas, to buy from local businesses. This year, it's particularly urgent, given the impact of COVID on small business. I buy my kids stuff from the local arts consignments shop, from Dakin in Vermont, from Snowfarm Vineyard in Vermont, and from Phoenix Books in Burlington. I want those business owners, not Jeff Bezos, to get my Christmas spend.

Some of my neighbors work for corporations too.

Privileging one form of business organization over another doesn’t have the effect of somehow sequestering wealth within a community. And if it did, we’d all be the poorer for it as commerce with the wider world diminished.

[catherine]

Some of my neighbors work for corporations too.

Privileging one form of business organization over another doesn’t have the effect of somehow sequestering wealth within a community.

It's not granting privilege. It's offering support. And I'm not talking about sequestering wealth. I'm talking about promoting survival.

http://content.time.com/time/busines...903632,00.html

And here's an article about how many business have permanently closed because of the pandemic. I'm not worried about Amazon shuttering--in fact, business is booming for them. I'm worried that Burlington's downtown will become a ghost town... Here's a picture of Hope, AK after Walmart and other big box stores came in. DD and I were on a road trip and literally saw tumbleweed rolling down Main Street.

IMG_0214.jpg

https://www.mynbc5.com/article/yelp-...demic/33460933

[SteveinMN]

If actual research and facts still mean anything, buying from locally-owned businesses is a good thing:

study from Michigan State University Center for Community and Economic Development (study from 2010 but the reasons haven't changed)

Better Business Bureau, 2019: 10 Ways Small Businesses Benefit Their Local Communities

Strong Towns article, 2018 Small Businesses Can Save Your Community

Institute for Local Self-Reliance, 2016 Why Independent Matters

I tried to avoid the sites parroting the same article and to avoid sources that would have a likely or evident interest in promoting local businesses (the Frostbite Falls Chamber of Commerce, etc.). Discuss in small groups, if you like.

[jp1]

The locally owned businesses hire from the same labor pools, buy from similar supply chains, use the same utilities and bank with the same financial institutions as the corporate owned businesses. Any profits they book could wind up with a small business owner on one side of the street or in dividend checks to a shareholder on the other. Either one is free to spend their income on travel or imported cars. Even if you confine your spending to an arbitrarily chosen geographic area, you can’t confine wealth to any one location. Choosing to benefit one neighbor over another with any given dollar spent strikes me as ethically neutral.

I suppose it depends on what one is buying. If one were to shop from my friend Gary’s pholography gallery or the gallery SuisiQ works at one is supporting the local artists who then hire local people for other tasks (staff, the handyman to fix plumbing, etc,). If one buys from amazon, not so much money swirling around the local economy beyond the UPS driver’s pocket

[ewomack]

I'm really late to this thread, but I had no participation in so-called "Black Friday" this year at all. I try and avoid events that entail numerous irrational consumers descending on a single point of hyperbolic mania. I've found that it suits me well in the long run.

Like others here, I have really cut down spending on inessentials. A book comes my way here and there, but I'm buying almost no "knick-nacky" things like I used to. I find that such things only keep my attention for a few years anyway and then make their way to the donation pile. But does anyone else want this stuff? I don't know.

[bae]

But does anyone else want this stuff? I don't know.

Having just cleaned out the houses of two parents-in-law who passed away, I'd say "nobody wants this sorta junk, it's just a burden".

[rosarugosa]

I think it depends on the stuff and where you are. On my local FB giving group, I see home decor knick-knacks snatched up eagerly. I think stage of life has something to do with it too.
A couple of years ago, I was in a HomeGoods store with my sister. We overheard a young man telling a sales associate that he was looking for stuff, decorative stuff, to fill his new place that was pretty empty. Sis and I joked that we should get his name and address, because we and our friends could set him up very nicely.