To the editor, last week at the city council meeting, i gave a statement during the public hearing about moving rowe court to accommodate the walgreens development project. my focus was not specifically walgreens, but larger issues about mega-corporations and their impact on our community. during the past year i have spent some time learning more about large, publicly-traded corporations and how they operate. it has been very eye-opening and has led me to believe that a primarily local economy is the most sustainable for a community over the long haul. when a large corporation wants to move into a community, all sorts of benefits to the community are typically cited as reasons to offer a variety of concessions zoning, tax breaks, etc. ; this ignores a fundamental truth about large corporations, especially publicly traded corporations -- they are "wealth extraction operations". they have one true purpose -- to maximize return on investment roi ; to the shareholders owners. what they actually do for business is secondary to this goal. maximizing roi is the legal fiduciary responsibility of the corporation. if a location is not profitable, it gets closed down, no matter what the impact on the community. they go where the money is -- that's why we have seven grocery stores, with an eighth in the works, within 15 miles of downtown laconia, but many inner city poor neighborhoods have no grocery stores, despite having a higher concentration of population. while this may make good business sense, the negative consequences for the disregarded communities are significant. corporations that are not entirely held or owned by local residents therefore must and will take more wealth profit ; out of the community in which they are doing business than they return in the form of jobs, taxes, and donations. this is a fact of corporate existence. the opposite tends to be true of locally owned businesses. one study done in mid-coast maine showed that a dollar spent in a locally owned business can generate three times more local economic activity than a dollar paid to a corporate chain newrules retail midcoaststudy . ; thus, by facilitating the presence of these corporate entities, a community agrees to give away a portion of its wealth, on top of job losses, business closings, etc that often result in the locally owned business sector. corporations are endowed with their corporate status by us, the citizens, when we via the state ; grant them a charter to operate in our state. it is a privilege, not a right, though over the past 150 years corporations have increasingly laid claim to "personhood" and by extension protection of rights that under the united states constitution were clearly stated with actual human beings in mind. when a corporation's representatives start spouting corporate "rights" arguments, i have but one response: "show me the body." to learn more about corporations, i recommend readers view the film "the corporation", available at the laconia public library, which is very informative about the evolution of the corporation in the united states. authors wendell berry and david korten both have some excellent writings regarding corporate dominance and people-friendly economic alternatives. finally, for a very inspiring and refreshing perspective on some highly successful businesses that have chosen not to embrace the standard corporate model, read the book "small giants", which is also available at the library. there are alternative business and economic models out there, ones that are more compatible with the democratic values we all hold so dear. karen barker laconia and roulette game.