05/30/2026
Well, if this isn’t an argument to shop, Local, I don’t know what is! Beautifully written by the multi-talented Becca Gamache-Sutter;
The Myth of the Shop Owner
Embodied economics and the cost of community
3 min read
You know the store…
The one with the faded sign out front that said EST. 1967 or 1980 or maybe even earlier. The one your parents went to. Maybe your grandparents too. The bell on the door always sounded the same when you walked in.
They sold things there, technically.
Jewelry.
Shoes.
Fabric.
Books.
Hardware.
Bread.
Whatever the store was, that’s not really what people were buying.
What the shop owner actually did was carry things.
They carried a line of handmade bracelets they thought people in town might love. They carried winter coats before the first frost because they knew how quickly the cold arrived. They carried the strange imported candies some kid always came looking for.
They carried wedding gifts. Birthday cards. Objects people would use to mark births, deaths, anniversaries, reconciliations, ordinary Tuesdays.
But “carry” means something deeper here too.
To carry something is to hold it for another person long enough that they can encounter it.
And the shop owner carried possibilities.
Taste.
Attention.
Memory.
A small understanding of the people around them.
And because of that, the store became more than a place of transaction. It became a local point of orientation. A place where human beings repeatedly crossed paths inside the same shared reality.
Then came convenience.
Infinite inventory.
Overnight shipping.
Lower prices.
No waiting.
No driving.
No friction or time wasted.
No conversation.
No need to depend on anyone locally at all. No need to connect.
Individually, the choice made perfect sense.
Collectively, something disappeared.
Not just the small business owners themselves, but that invisible relational layer they had been quietly carrying all along.
Because the shop owner was not simply distributing products. They were absorbing and redistributing our attention. They were touchstones in the hustle and bustle of ordinary life. They were participating in the slow maintenance of community keeping without anyone formally naming it as such.
Now, algorithms carry things for us.
But algorithms do not wonder whether your daughter would prefer the blue scarf tothe green one.
They do not ask how your mother is recovering.
They do not quietly hold your purchase behind the counter until payday because they know your family.
They do not remember who you were ten years ago. They don’t witness your growth, your stories, your ordinary life.
Convenience removed cost from our transactions while softly removing relationships from the environment.
This pattern exists far beyond stores.
Teachers carry thirty children through institutional exhaustion. Nurses carry the emotional overflow of an entire floor. Parents carry the nervous systems of the whole family. And friends are the ones who notice when we are slipping beneath the surface.
Society has mistaken this kind of carrying for softness because it rarely appears in our economic models. It may be one of the primary ways our societies remain psychologically intact.
The problem is that we cannot endlessly function as invisible infrastructure for systems optimized against friction.
Eventually, our carrying capacity breaks.
And the evidence is already here: mental health, addiction, loneliness, burnout, rage, collapse, and the strange feeling that everyone is simultaneously connected and profoundly unheld.
Technology is neither good nor bad on its own. It is here, and it has a cost.
Who bears the cost of keeping human connections alive when that labor isn’t even legible to the people who carry it?
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Embodied economics and the cost of community
