In the past 30 years, downtowns everywhere have been hollowed out by strip malls, chains, and real estate development. Local businesses that serve their communities are going extinct.

This is just generic "appeal to nostalgia", romanticizing a bygone era that probably never existed "as such" in the first place, and desperately scraping for a way to attack modern capitalism.

When chains displace "local businesses" they do so for a reason: they offer a combination of price/service/value/whatever, that the residents of the region favor to an extent that it makes the other businesses no longer viable. If people want "friendly neighborhood druggist who has lived and worked in the same spot for 70 years" they don't appear to be willing to pay for that.

As for "the need for money to make more money"... yes, that's a real phenomenon, no doubt. There's a reason Pareto distributions occur and it probably has to do with "preferential attachment" and path dependence. And to be fair, pretty much nobody wants a world of deep economic inequality. BUT... you have to look at the flip-side... in many ways, it is easier and cheaper today to start a new enterprise and begin the path of "making more money" than it's ever been. It's been cheap to start a web-based SaaS offering for a while, and even though enterprises making physical goods are still expensive, the emergence of things like Kickstarter, Indie-go-go, etc. have made that world more accessible as well.

If you want to argue that it's unfair that Joe Random Guy can't start a new oil refinery or steel mill or a nuclear power plant, then OK... you have a point. But has it ever been the case that just anybody could start something like that? And is it necessary for that to be the case?

A diverse universe of record labels is steadily consolidating down. A shocking percentage of Top 40 hits are written by four Scandinavian men.

And yet the universe of music that I have access to has been constantly expanding, thanks to the Internet, open source software, and advances in technology which make powerful tools for creating and recording music cheaper and cheaper.

Don’t sell out your values, don’t sell out your community, don’t sell out the long term for the short term. Do something because you believe it’s wonderful and beneficial, not to get rich.

Now this we can agree on. This is one reason we haven't tried to raise outside capital at Fogbeam. We want to build the kind of company we want to build, not necessarily the kind of company that VC's want to build.

Always act with integrity. Really be clear about the things that drive you. Remember the lessons your parents and grandparents taught you about how to treat people and make sure your business lives up to that.

Agreed.

Earlier this year we became a Public Benefit Corporation. This means we are legally obligated to consider the impact of our decisions on society, not just our shareholders. It’s very different from the expectation that for profit companies maximize shareholder value above all. It acknowledges and embraces that you are a part of a larger community.

Benefit Corporations are a great idea, and I hope North Carolina adopts a "B Corp" law eventually. We don't have the notion here currently, not as a legal form acknowledged by the State anyway. If any fellow North Carolinians are reading and want to work together on B corp advocacy here, ping me and let's get started.