Merchants must be strangers?

As much as I agree with you that contemporary society no longer requires outsiders to supply a community with foreign commodities, I do consider merchants to be strangers in my life. I think that contemporary society has turned merchants into even more unfamiliar beings disconnected and separate from us in many ways. Since most of us now purchase from or interact with bureaucracy and giant corporations rather than individual merchants, I don't even think that the term merchant truly applies to our present society. Considering that every trading relationship is eventually a non-personal exchange of goods and services for set prices, I think that merchants are forever locked into the status of a stranger.

I agree with what Chantelle said, the idea of merchants is a more historical concept before the age of the industrial revolution. Before the increase of factory production, each item was hand crafted most of the time and now we lose that individuality in the item. I believe that merchants will continue to be strangers as we still won't have that deep sated connection with them and there would still be that divide. The items or the material goods separate our connection from others.