I half-agree. You are correct that, if all of the stuff is made or grown elsewhere, local retail will not be enough to keep the local economy in decent shape. But, that does not mean that the process of consolidating retail into remote (mall) chains that are loosely committed to that community, is not also deeply flawed.
But if we don't consolidate retail into mall chains that are loosely committed to that community, it will consolidate into even more-impersonal Amazon warehouses! Wal-Mart is not the local-economy defender we wanted, but it's the one it needs right now!
I think it's possible that many towns would have benefited from different policies (and I think that's an interesting subject!), but I still think many of them didn't have any real choice.
If they had a possibility to develop in a more beneficial way, but could not make that choice, what forced them? Making beneficial choices for local economy and community is basically a job description of local politicians and officials.
