[slipperydippery]

> When I had a bad experience at a chain pharmacy 10-ish years ago I spent less than an hour, googled "independent pharmacies" and found the National Community Pharmacists Association. They have a locator for locally-owned independent pharmacies and I switched to one of those.

The sole local thing I've been missing around here is a pharmacy that's not fucking CVS, which is awful (and Walgreens isn't better). I hadn't been able to find one using Maps.

Just tried this tool, very hopeful. There are six CVSs closer than the nearest independent pharmacy, literally a dozen towns closer to me than any of these independent pharmacies, and not a one with a non-megachain pharmacy in it :-/ Not driving 25ish minutes each way when we have to go two or three times a month (kids with regular prescriptions). Bummer. I really, really hate CVS.

> And before you say "there's no other option" you're wrong, unless you live in a deep rural area where the nearest store is 20 minutes away and is a Dollar General, you are wrong.

This varies greatly regionally. From what I can tell the places with the healthiest local business options are ones where not just some neighborhoods or a town or two are (relatively) rich, but the whole area is rich, and at least somewhat densely populated. Which makes sense, but is sad for all the small towns out there with people really ideologically dedicated to "local business"—there's a reason those struggle and often fail within a year or two, in those places, and it's because there's no money in the area.

[rsynnott]

> Which makes sense, but is sad for all the small towns out there with people really ideologically dedicated to "local business"

Pretty much everyone (excepting accelerationist communists, who would see near-monopolies as a failure mode of capitalism and thus desireable, as it would tend to hasten the collapse of the system) agrees that it's preferable to have more small businesses, vs near-monopolies; _that_ isn't really an ideological question. The disagreement is on what makes a good environment for small businesses. The US right would have you believe that it's all about low tax and low regulation, but the evidence doesn't seem to be on their side.

It's interesting to note that the US actually has rather few SMEs per capita for an advanced developed country; pretty much all countries in high-regulation high-tax Western Europe have more. Sweden has about five times more.

(Personal theory is that a big part of it is healthcare and other social safety nets; it must be really, really scary to leave your secure job to start a business in the US, unless you have a big pile of cash to fall back on.)