It's called capitalism. I saw a film about how Wal-Mart moved into a town and "destroyed" all the small businesses. I was cheering for Wal-Mart.
A locally owned Ace Hardware store about 5 miles from my house is also within 5 miles of 2 Home Depots and 2 Lowes. It has been in business for over 40 years and is thriving. Very heavy on service and prices are competitive. Many of the staple items are high quality, not the cheap Chinese junk at the big boxes. It demonstrates a small business can compete if the owner truly understands the customer.
In contrast my builder chose a local small business as the sub to install the gutters on my house. Five years later the paint on the surface is splotchy because he scratched up the surface during the install, spray painted the scratches, and the spray paint has faded to a different shade than the original surface. The gutter installer and the contractor refuse to fix the problem even though I have a written 15 year warranty on the paint not fading and the installation. I suspect if I’d contracted the job to HD or Lowes and the same thing happened the big boxes would have replaced it. By the way my attorney says it will cost as much as the potential compensation is worth to sue them, if I can collect should I win. No doubt they are aware of the high cost of litigation and are correctly betting I’ll not sue.
Quite frankly it has been my experience the consumer is more likely to be cheated by small business people than big retailers. Particularly small business people who sell infrequently purchased products. The gutter guy and the contractor know I’ll never use them again so the perceived cost of not backing their work is low.
It's called corrupted democracy, or shortly banana republic. How do you think the big boxes got there if not by bribes (in this banana republic called: campaign contributions or tax breaks), for zoning changes, for road access, utilities, etc?