Small businesses selling generic items are just not capable of excellence for the same reason that I would not be a competent doctor, lawyer, and software engineer compared to people who did just one of those things.

I knew of a small town grocery store where my grandparents used to have a vacation property. They got a delivery of food once a week, so anything fresh had deteriorated halfway through the week. Technicians needed to be booked weeks in advance to fix things like fridges as it was several hours outside the city, so for a month they didn't have space for cheese. They couldn't buy anything that had a large minimum order and couldn't get bulk prices, so it was expensive. Locals didn't shop there was it was cheaper to burn half a tank of gas. They get hit the hardest during supply chain challenges as their understanding of logistics is to place an order and hope it shows up.

They can exist for niche food products, but selling milk, grapes, and cereal? No, as they will dramatically underperform a business that specializes in dealing with those.

Didn't realize Associated Grocers type distributors/co-ops weren't a nationally universal thing.

The cities didn't have much choice when those stores were built outside of city limits or in a neighboring town.

Lay the blame where the responsibility resides: with the consumers who chose bulk over local.

While it's true that individual consumers make choices like this, it's not fair to blame individuals for systemic problems. If a person making a low wage is given the choice between feeling good about supporting local business, and being able to afford enough food to survive by shopping at a big box store, it's not really a fair choice.

Not my point. Tax income for small towns no long match infrastructure support costs. Never mind who's buying what where.

It's the small town buckling to the WalGetCo corporate negotiators, giving them tax breaks and new roads and water and sewer expansion. With just one business served by the new infrastructure: the big box store.

Sure the taxable property goes up, city income goes up; but the density is way less than the old downtown, the new income doesn't come close to paying for the new outflows, and the old downtown businesses find themselves subsidizing their competition on the edge of town.

So wrong.

For places with sales tax, a big box moving in can easily double a small towns tax revenue overnight.

I don't dispute that small business suffers, but its far from zero-sum. The increased revenue benefits the town far more than the town pays for any infrastructure upkeep.

Especially since most cities require the developer to pay for all the initial upgrades in the first place, including their own utilities tie-ins and improvements to extant public roads (eg traffic studies, adding lanes, installing signals).

So right. This was covered on a post here on HN last week. An in-depth review of an (Illinois?) town and the hole they'd dug for themselves.

Read it, and reconsider.

When a consumer is offered a choice that is more attractive to them, it seems unreasonable to blame them for taking it.

Maybe blame neither.

Which entity set up the tax system such that this kind of freeloading was possible? State governments, I’d guess.

How dare those consumers not have enough wealth to shop based on anything but lowest price

if you follow the motivation of the different groups the motivation is the same for everyone and its best to focus on people rather than entities. business owners have an insatiable desire for profits and are willing to sacrifice society and individuals to do so. Consumers value saving money over supporting local or dont see the value in the local offerings real or perceived (big companies have both economies of scale and generally more effective advertising) suppliers crater better to big businesses because they make them more money and exert more power over them. a more personal one on one contact of a small business is a pain to them and takes more resources. local politicians are presented with a choice of getting nothing or allowing them to go to an area that will, and then they get nothing. not to mention potential personal kickbacks, short term positive press with the consequences being on the next politician.

The root of the problem is society valuing their own money/things over people. one person or organization changing wouldn't change things significantly, and the rest in the chain will probably pressure them back. Sadly society is moving further away from valuing people. online shopping, crypto currency, automation as much as i love all these advancements they enable and increases the value of things over people, and in turn a concentration of wealth and power.

It feels really disingenuous to put all of the blame on consumers that are motivated to find the best price for basic goods like food instead of the companies that operate at the scale which enables them to undercut local business to lethal degree. You're essentially arguing that consumers are at fault for acting the way that the consumer-driven capitalist business model expects them to behave. Major investment in cheap, nationwide retail caused this, not consumers.

Can you even really blame the consumers? That's like blaming the birds who eat at bird feeders instead of the people who put out bird feeders in cities [1]. Blame the corporations and builders.

[1] Bird feeders can contribute to the decline of native plants when birds who disperse the seeds in their scat feed at the feeders, their scat often lands somewhere where the seeds have no chance at germinating (sidewalk, mowed lawn etc)

It’s hardly the small towns fault that countries urbanize as they get wealthier

It is their fault when they redistrict to expand their borders into the county, then realize they haven't the means to pay for all that infrastructure. Simple accounting mistakes can bankrupt them. Enthusiastic starry-eyed town councils want everything, but never even think about paying for it.

We're talking small towns here. Their council is a fireman, a baker, an insurance salesperson. Not a professional city planner. It seems inevitable they will over-reach and bankrupt the city treasury. It's a real risk.