If there’s anything people say about me — other than, “Why does that guy always ask, ‘Are you going to finish that?’” — it’s that I’m a true champion of local enterprise, as made clear by my car’s bumper sticker: “Think Local, Act Local, Live Local, Buy Local, And Seriously, If You’re Not Going to Finish That, I’ll Definitely Eat It.”
So, as holiday shopping got underway last fall, I set out on Small Business Saturday with my list of who’s been naughty and who’s been nice. Well, not so much “a list” as “a detailed dossier with intimate details about each person,” all easily gathered thanks to the modern corporate/surveillance state and your blithe acceptance of a pocket-sized, Internet-connected, always-on telecommunications/GPS/video-recording device that, let’s be honest here, you’d probably marry if (and when) it’s legal.
Since my go-to holiday gifts are books, I use that detailed information when shopping at our well-known local bookstores to find the perfect gift. And, last fall, I had heard about a new entrant in the local book-biz landscape and was looking forward to spreading some of my holiday-shopping dollars around there, too. And not just my dollars, but also many thousands of BillShares™, the local Berkshires currency I recently created that is, I swear, totally legit legal tender that is tradable for goods and services and also fully 100-percent redeemable for U.S. dollars. Just trust me, and here, take…
