The problem with small business saturday and American Express

One of the cornerstone's of China's weaponized economy is that while the Chinese may or may not be intentionally draining the economic power of the USA (they certainly are); this process is being accelerated by our technology.

The big box stores and the internet have established a mail order economy.  While UPS, Walmart and Amazon have created fortunes for their shareholders, the customers have lost their small businesses, their jobs and the local manufacturing businesses consolidated and moved overseas.

In the end, the shareholders will hold fortunes in worthless dollars and being beholden to overseas countries who have the manufacturing to build economies weapons and economies.

While "small business saturday" sounds like a wonderful opportunity to correct this problem, it is like putting a bandaid on a corpse.  That American Express would attempt this as a solution to this problem shows that this company and the world at large are insensible to the larger problem.

There are potential solutions, discussed in CWE, AE would be better off ordering copies and sending them to random people than trying to make one day out of the year work for these businesses.  In effect, it requires waging war on the way our economy is unraveling itself.  

We have to do this without abandoning our technology, but we must ensure manufacturing returns to the USA and that distribution is localized.  We have to do this without open warfare with China, without open warfare with Amazon, but we have to do it nevertheless if we do not intend to become a nation without meaning and without jobs and therefore without purpose.