The thing about Tesco and the like is, the damage they do really isn't obvious. But it's there, subtle and insidious.
Village shops -- the local butcher's, baker's, hardware store &c. -- used to be places where you spoke to, interacted with, connected with your neighbours. The shopkeeper, and most of the other customers, lived in the village with you. Also, until quite recently, it was acceptable for any adult to feed, discipline or commandeer the services of any child, and it would hardly be unusual to be asked to help someone else carry their shopping home. Everyone knew everyone else, and what was going on; and you quickly learned that it was all one big doorstep you really shouldn’t dirty.
Living like that engenders a real sense of individual responsibility. Humans are pack animals; and one of the manifestations of our pack instinct is, people tend to act in such ways as not to make other people want to say bad things about them. In the village where I grew up, if the newsagent caught you stealing — and she would catch you; she had eyes in the back of her head — she would silently add the items to your parents’ paper bill. Shoplifting was something nobody ever tried twice.
You just don’t get the same sense in a huge, impersonal supermarket. The staff, and all the other customers, are basically strangers. You can't get to know the checkout assistants, or the specialists at the various counters, because there are so many of them and you never get the same person from one visit to the next. Your next-door neighbour could be in the same store, and yet you probably would not even notice them. If you haven't got a bond with someone, you can't empathise with them; and if you don't think you're going to see them again then you don't have so much of an interest in making a good impression on them. And the self-policing effect is lost. It’s a recipe for anti-social behaviour, alienation, paranoia, depression and suicide.
Apologists for Tesco will tell you that they are only providing goods that people want to buy at a price they don't mind paying and at hours that suit, but that doesn't mean that local shops weren't selling goods that people wished to buy. And if local shops are more expensive, that is because they have naturally higher overheads, if you are measuring strictly in pounds and pence, than a steel-frame building quickly thrown up on a piece of waste ground. But they had a social benefit that was only noticeable when it was lost.
