Convenience is a Choice. So is Community.

Nobody decided to abandon Main Street. It happened one convenient decision at a time, over thirty years, while nobody was paying attention.

Amazon made buying Pampers at 3AM possible. GoDaddy made building a website something you could do yourself on a Tuesday night. Meta made reaching customers feel like something you could handle without any help. Each of those platforms made a local alternative feel unnecessary before anyone had the chance to ask if one existed.

That is not an accident. It is a business model. And it worked on all of us…residents and business owners alike.

The ‘shop local’ conversation usually stops at the register. But convenience did not just change where residents spend their dollars. It changed where businesses spend theirs too. Every automatic renewal, every national service contract, every platform subscription that replaced a local provider is a decision that compounds. Quietly. Until the ecosystem that was supposed to support Main Street has been hollowed out from the inside.

Convenience is a choice. So is community. And the towns that will still feel like towns ten years from now are the ones where people started asking local first.

This is the short version of a longer argument. The full piece is available on Substack.