I've come to the same conclusion. Never before in history have people truly optimize while thinking of themselves as a whole- the second something more convenient was offered, they took it immediately. I think that we're at a place in human history where we desperately need every person to step back from convenience in order to optimize for society.

This is the point of government and regulation. We're not going to get far relying on willpower and rational thought in individual decision-making. So we use government as tool to help use out.

I can't stop myself from eating an entire of package of Oreos if they're in the kitchen. So I don't buy them. I don't give myself the choice, because I know I'll make a bad one. Instead, I choose to restrict my choice (and the choice of the rest of my household) for our overall well-being.

This feels pretty bad if you're a 10-year-old and just want some freaking cookies. Sorry you weren't able to make your own choice there. Our overall well-being took priority over your individual liberties. I get why that is unacceptable to some folks, but there has to be some balance, and sometimes that means restricting personal liberties in order to maintain the health of the overall system and community.

To be fair all attempts at optimization on a grand scale like that give a new meaning to calling "premature optimization the root of all evil" as it starts including things like Eugenics and Inquisitions. It inevitably ends in failure, tears, and travesties. Or more pedestrian Soviet style lack of market failures.

Local is "sexy" but it has had worse efficency instead of better like promised and is often premised upon overassumptions of the cost of transit and a denial of inconvenient fact of economies of scale because it doesn't fit their world view.

It appears that part of the reason it is popular is because people think they understand it and think the logistics would be easier. I would put it in the simple, easy, and wrong camp of ideas.

As far as the individual goes, I think the locally optimal decision differs if you care about the difference in quality of taste from the non Walmart milk, or in the quality of life in the cattle that produced it.

Makes me consider Douglas Hofstadter's superrationality. Hofstadter provided this definition: "Superrational thinkers, by recursive definition, include in their calculations the fact that they are in a group of superrational thinkers."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superrationality