Even if it is hard for us to objectively tell which is the best product nowadays, do we always need to buy the one made by the biggest company with the biggest advertising budget?

Considering what’s at stake, it can be a useful form of disruption simply to cultivate a habit of going the opposite way—i.e., in the absence of compelling evidence of inferiority, resolving to favor the local and less well-known competitor. The benefits to us can be direct as well as indirect.

For example, if we want a good cup of coffee, we can choose the nationally known brand of Starbucks, or we can choose the little family-owned place up the block. In the former case, the only way our money goes to local people is to pay their salaries as employees of a large corporation; in the latter, it sustains local people as independent entrepreneurs. Do we want to subsidize corporate gigantism, or contribute to a climate of independent entrepreneurship?