Comment by ben_w

> JTFC why are you arguing minutiae? The analogies aren't the argument.

I'm replying to someone who themselves argued the analogies.

> Having a DC in your community has no appreciable personal benefit, only negatives.

To the extent that statement is true, it applies equally to most primary and secondary economic activity.

Having a farm in your community has no appreciable personal benefit: for scale, the UK famously gets a lot of their sheep meat from New Zealand, as far away as it is physically possible to be.

An abattoir similarly has no substantial local benefit, but worse has much detriment owing to the psychological damage it does to the workers, leading to higher rates of arrest for violent criminal offences: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/108602660933816...

Unless it's at the scale where it becomes a company town, having a factory, a warehouse, etc. these things are all heavily automated or mechanised and employ only a few of the locals as a percentage of the population. Putting anything that isn't service-sector in your community (i.e. schools, hospitals, shops, restaurants, hairdressers, etc.) is going to be of "no appreciable personal benefit" when considered in isolation.

Almost all primary (farming, fishing, mining) and secondary (manufacturing) comes with negatives (pollution, higher wear on the roads and utilities).