Once upon a time they meant the same.
I have always tried to support the locals. Feeling useless to help the world at large; feeling that in this way too, the purchasing of goods as well as in the aid of friendship, that if each of us extend ourselves fully to those within our reach, the circles will overlap and help each other and somehow encompass all. I am willing to pay a higher price to Ron and Ray and Annie for their goods to keep the Walmarts out of town. Ray bent to the will of the populace and closed the deli down after thirty years. He’ll be replaced by a sprawling something that will charge pennies less for goods and services that cost them dollars less to buy in bulk.
Ron is trying to keep up, his wife no longer starts the annuals from seed. I buy my vegie plants and flowers there–for sixteen years now. But what I bought and thought (and this was my fault for not checking, I suppose, despite their overlush appearance) were six trays of six petunias each for thirty dollars total–and high at that price–turned out to be six healthy and vigorous plants likely started in a greenhouse somewhere back in December. They will not even fit among the geraniums and lobelia in the pots and will likely end up lining the dianthus in the front of the shop. Now I need to buy some more at a sprawling somewhere else, too embarrassed for myself, for Ron as well, to return them.
Free enterprise is a special right and privilege; capitalism has become a dirty word.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology