A co-worker sent me, a while ago, an email with a link to a page, in Portuguese, telling people about our “duty” to our country to buy Portuguese products, in order to “support national production”, because “by buying foreign products, it forces national producers to raise their prices”. The co-worker seemed, herself, to support that point of view, and I’m sure that if I talked about it in the office, most people would agree that it was a “noble” thing to do, even if they didn’t want to inconvenience themselves by paying more than they were forced to.
And yet, I could only think about an article I read a few years ago in the Ayn Rand Institute web site, called “Buy American is UN-American“. It applies, of course, whatever your country is.
Without wanting to repeat the article’s content here, the following is a translation of my reply to my co-worker, which I wrote before re-reading the article linked above:
The consumer should always choose the best product, that with the best quality/price ratio. That’s it. If we begin to choose national products, even though they’re WORSE, we’re doing 2 things:
- admitting that we’re some poor incompetent slobs who can’t do anything well;
- telling national companies that they don’t need to create or manufacture quality products, because even if they’re trash we’ll still buy them out of “patriotism”.
The result of that is:
- as consumers, we get worse and worse products, and worse and worse deals;
- internationally, our products will come to be known as shoddy, low-quality garbage, which will mean increasingly fewer exports – if any at all.
On the other hand, if we simply buy what is best and has the best relationship between quality and price, we are “encouraging” our companies to do better, and making sure they are competitive – both nationally and internationally. Besides, we’ll have better quality at lower prices.
Believe me: if you’re buying national products even though you know they are worse and more expensive than the foreign competition, you’re not “supporting your country,” you’re harming it.
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