Look, I’m not out here advocating for mega corps. I live in a city with a ton of local restaurants, grocery stores, etc and I’m glad I do, because the quality is generally much better. That being said, I’ve also worked for “local” businesses and the petite bourgeois is often no better (sometimes even worse) than the corporate CEO.
There is a reason Walmart employs a huge swath of rural America: they probably pay better than 90% of small businesses in those same towns and offer benefits. Give your local “mom and pop” one chance and they would gladly expand and become the same mega corps everyone despises.
Sure, shop local, but scrutinize your local businesses just as much as your local Walmart. Good chance everyone behind the counter is making minimum wage with no benefits and a boss who makes an appearance once every couple days to chastise people and grab some free beer that he’ll illegally write off as a loss before heading back home to sit on his ass and collect profits.