Detroit is the only town in America where misery hates company, or at least distrusts it, Brian Dickerson writes in the Free Press.
Riffing off the recent anti-Shinola diatribe in the Four Pins fashion blog by Detroiter Jon Moy -- “Shinola is using my city as its shill, pushing a manufactured, outdated and unrealistic ideal of America” -- Dickerson suggests "we need to develop more sophisticated ways to decide which companies are making a net contribution to Detroit and which are net-loss parasites."
He adds:
We ought to be wary of vilifying any enterprise just because its Detroit roots are recent, tenuous or exaggerated by marketing executives based on another continent.
Of course they’re trying to sell us something, and of course they want to exploit their connection to Detroit to sell more of it, to Detroiters and everyone else.
But in commerce, unlike professional sports, there are scenarios in which everyone comes out ahead — and a win for the visitors needn’t be a loss for the home team.
