
The Sad Spectacle of Cities Grovelling to Amazon - walterbell
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2017/10/the-sad-spectacle-of-cities-groveling-to-amazon
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galkk
I don't buy arguments of an author, he's building strawman and fights with it.

Couple examples from an article: > Louisiana nearly bankrupted its state
treasury writing checks to the film industry, as part of a doomed effort to
turn New Orleans into the “Hollywood of the South.” (When the checks dried up,
the industry left.)

Movie industry is project based, it's easier to move in/out (I assume). To
make movie is much lesser commitment than to relocate 50k people in the area.

> The case of sports stadiums is notorious. Sports teams force municipalities
> to spend a fortune building new stadiums, on the promise that the local
> economy will be “stimulated.” They can then threaten to leave unless they
> receive further bribes. (And it turns out that they don’t stimulate much at
> all, bringing few economic benefits in return for the millions of dollars
> spent appeasing team owners.)

Office buildings and city infrastructure are not stadiums, and Amazon isn't
sport team. (How much people do they employ? I can't formulate query but I
hardly believe that it's more than 1000)

disclaimer: Amazon employee, but I'd made this comment this even if I weren't.

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njarboe
While the problems with cities giving big business too many perks is a serious
one, by the end of the article it seems this is just another negative piece on
Bezos, "a demented tyrant", by the author.

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thisisfineagain
Their own inability to address their own problems _

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joeblow9999
Competition is good duh.

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thisisfineagain
There's the sad spectacle of mayors groveling for money, but then there's a
longer term sad spectacle of many of these failing local governments engaging
in long term corruption, slighting people for short term gains, and
particularly upstate New York where the onion wrote an article making fun of a
cities proposal, an area which is notorious for it's brain drain where union
workers, rigged business models, ..all with the buffalo billions scandal (just
Google it, about the solar City plant in buffalo) still overhanging in the
midst of a state governor engaged in three stacked federal investigations on
top after one of the most abysmal and embarrassing presidential election in
American history, both candidates being from New York, regardless of which
side you take. Corruption, and a long history of incestuous government and
business politics with a culture of conflicts of interests and corruption
being the norm, meanwhile driving out every big company that has wanted to
come to the point that solar City/Tesla the new chip factory want to have
nothing to do with them, is really due to one thing, the self destructive
nature of people who take and slight people for short term gains, or use their
power to embed themselves from criticism and ensure entitlement to things they
do not continually have to prove they have earned.

In the long run, this mentality results in a brain drain, and a sad cycle of
cities being poor, raising homeowners taxes further until all the people
successful enough to own homes leave to go elsewhere and take their jobs with
them, until the government is solely responsible for providing economic
welfare to the people. After decades of this, governments become used to
playing both the economy and the government and lose all concepts of a healthy
balance between the two.

After living in cities like this, and growing up poor I can say I don't think
it means these cities shouldn't try or that the rest of the world should
forget about them, I just mean there is something so inherently self
destructive about the idea that cities that grovel for business ironically
display their own ability to address their own problems. Being self
sufficient, and fostering that sense in people even to people who are born in
an economic disadvantage is important for ones own sense of what they can
accomplish. When a city has a government used to playing god government and
business and the city is accustomed to being the victim bad things happen.

I can say it's a sad story. Most people who grow up in cities this isolated
and depressed are not only unknowing of how to advocate for themselves, many
have justified their culture by being voilently xenophobic against people
perceived to have "money" contributing an even more viscious cycle of the
brain drain.

New York has been losing young people for over 25 years. I don't suspect
Amazon would come here, but even so it would take decades to see a real
culture change and ultimately every individual needs to contribute to a
positive change and a success attitude.

I was in Seattle this summer and anytime Amazon or an Amazon employee came up,
people in Seattle became slighted and disgusted and immediately blurted out
some passive agressive comment about Amazon or a negative stereotype about
Amazon employees, even from store owners down the street from Amazon buildings
that clearly benefited from the company being there, but didn't seem to
understand that or be grateful or even objectively consider their self
destructive attitude. This happened to me several times while being in Seattle
and visiting friends at Amazon.

It is because of that culture that is hard to change that even after all this
time of Amazon being there, still within a stone's throw away is hate and
animosity to the very thing poor cities seem to think their people will
benefit from. Assigning blame to either the company the people the mayor's or
Amazon employees doesn't seem like a productive conclusion, but acknowledging
that the behavior I've witnessed to anyone who realizes where I work even if I
never mention it, immediately becomes hostile to me and assumes the worst
about my character and motivation ("all you care about is money" actually no
all I cared about was physics in highschool and I kept pursuing my curiosities
never parties worked hard in highschool and college and everyday since then
for something I'm endlessly curious about and never got a degree in political
science or economics but here I am responsible for what you deem to be an
inequality I meticulously designed for your demise).

