Imagine walking down the main street of your town five years from now. Picture your favorite bakery, the reliable HVAC repair service you’ve used for a decade, the local independent pharmacy where your friend’s daughter works, and the manufacturing plant that employs fifty families. Now, imagine that while the storefronts remain, the businesses you loved are effectively gone. The names might have changed to generic national brands, or perhaps they kept the old sign but gutted the soul of the operation. The staff you knew have been laid off, prices have spiked, and the quality has deteriorated so sharply—frozen pastries, aggressive upselling, and endless wait times—that you no longer want to shop there. The profits that once sponsored the local Little League team are now being siphoned off to a skyscraper in Manhattan, leaving behind a hollowed-out shell of the community you once knew.
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