
Amazon’s D.C. Move Threatens the Founders’ Vision for America - danso
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/04/13/would-the-founders-have-freaked-out-about-amazons-dc-headquarters-226653
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eridius
If the Founders' Vision was to keep business and government separate, then why
was New York City the capital of the US when George Washington was sworn in as
president? It didn't last very long, but a lot of people wanted to keep it
there. It was Thomas Jefferson that demanded it be moved to a "rural setting",
which this article completely glosses over and tries to imply it was the
general will.

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skybrian
Yes, people disagreed. It was a compromise.

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eridius
"The Founder's Vision" implies a grand plan, not a compromise, and especially
not a compromise driven by a single person.

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skybrian
I agree, but I don't think it was just Jefferson? He negotiated a compromise
because he needed more votes. Seems like this implies he did have _some_ votes
(from southern states), just not enough?

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cortesoft
This seems a bit silly in the modern world. Yeah, geographical proximity
mattered 200 years ago, but these days most senior business people travel
about the country constantly. I bet they are more often not in their office
than in.

Second, lobbyists are in Washington all the time anyway. Amazon can spend
their money influencing politics from anywhere.

Keeping powers geographically separated doesn't mean much in the era of video
conferencing and air travel.

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inimino
If you were right, SF housing prices wouldn't be what they are, and Amazon
could have put their HQ in Wyoming and gotten a great deal on real estate.
Proximity matters. It affects not just who works together but who runs into
each other, who you see walking around your city, and how you look at the
world.

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cle
I don't understand why everyone assumes the DC move is for lobbying or
government influence. I always assumed it's just a business move, the DC area
has a high supply of security-cleared engineers and AWS is pushing into
GovCloud. It seems a lot more plausible to me that Amazon is just making a
strategic business move by tapping into a unique labor market, than some
conspiratorial culture-shaping crusade.

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putlake
Nothing in the article quotes anything directly from the founders about
geographical separation of economic centers and political capitals. Lobbying
has already corrupted Washington. There is no logical argument in the article.
It seems to be be anti-Amazon propaganda.

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mises
You're completely correct, but I think it's worth using as a spark for a
conversation on Amazon's more metaphorical political move into Washington.
That is the concern.

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asmithmd1
This article is nonsense. Off the top of my head: Accenture, General Dynamics,
Northrup Grumman, and M&M/Mars have corporate headquarters in the suburbs
around Washington. Not such a big deal now, but AOL also through off quite a
bit of wealth for a while.

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conanbatt
Strange move, i think Amazon might be making a play again with the political
sphere now.

This is purely a play between Amazon and the political caste. They will
definitely not fight amazon in DC, and Amazon might gain all kinds of leverage
with this one.

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dontbenebby
Or maybe they'll drive up the rent and piss off every single senate staffer,
judicial clerk, and lower level regulatory agency worker in the district.

DC has a relatively low cost of living compared to NYC or SF, due to the high
number of GS payscale[1] workers.

[1] [https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-
leave/salaries...](https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-
leave/salaries-wages/salary-tables/19Tables/html/DCB.aspx)

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conanbatt
Politicians are homeowners, they will welcome the explosion of housing value

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dontbenebby
These workers aren't usually buying, they're renting.

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mises
I think it is important to note that while it doesn't really matter in what
city Amazon is located, it's metaphorical "move into Washington" in terms of
politics is the problem.

Crony capitalism is cancer. Why did we not realize that if we increase the
power given to government, someone will abuse it? People have suspected it
could be a malicious politician, but it has instead become corporatists that
buy their competition out of business to secure monopolies and prevent
competition. The more authority we cede, the more it can be abused.

I think the best possibility is to move more regulation to state and local
governments and to relegate the feds to constitutionally specified powers.
Local governments can be easier to buy, but it is my belief that such an
impact would be offset by 1. the common man's greater control in how his local
government is run (one vote in 100 one-hundred-thousand is much greater than
one in three-hundred-million). It is also much harder to catch one-hundred
small fish than one whale.

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conanbatt
Yup, my intuition is along those lines as well. Are politicians going to block
the massive money that comes along with this like they did in NY?

And can you imagine the leverage you get with the big topics like breaking
amazon up if it means all the DC officials and gov employees will lose this
precious boon?

AOC finally won the war on this one. Government just showed it was powerful
enough to bend Amazon's will.

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true_religion
Despite Amazon propaganda about their new HQ being “national landing” and
collocated in DC/VA/MD, there is no such place.

The new HQ is in Arlington, Virginia and considering DC traffic is not an easy
transit to or from anything not on same the metro-line.

Bezos already lives in VA and owns the Washington Post. I don’t see how moving
his HQ makes a difference at this point in terms of access to government
lobbying by him.

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snakeboy
> Movements like the Yellow Vest protesters in France, for instance, have a
> bigger and easier target to attack because the country’s economic and
> political power is concentrated in Paris.

In this case, wouldn't this be a feature of localisation of private and public
elites? That is, it is easier for a grass-roots protest to take hold and
target corruption in a centralized way?

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RickJWagner
"Many of the founders would have hated the idea of a megacorporation in such
close proximity to Congress and the White House..."

How on earth can the author claim to know what the founders would have
thought? I can't think of anything left in writing that would suggest such a
thing.

Seems like the author is just pulling stuff out of..... let's say 'the air'.

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caprese
Good points, although just a matter of time. The DC area functions as regional
support for basically all large tech companies.

The article makes it seem like an absurdity to the founding fathers to imagine
such a large multi-national corporation being there. But they certainly could
imagine this, the revolutionary war was a fight against the British East India
Company inextricably tied to Britain until the entity dropped stewardship of
these colonies out of budgetary concerns. Masquaraded as a decisive victory to
support its new national identity, it was clear that corporate control of the
government would not be the stance of the new American government.

Yes then the largest public company in the world moving there does theeaten
this. But at the same time, that ship has long sailed and this just reminds
everyone.

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mensetmanusman
Military industrial complex already accomplished that...

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viburnum
Move the capital to Kansas City.

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rtkwe
Think bigger! I'd love to see a built from scratch planned city as the capital
with proper spaces for all the national museums and departments and a strong
public transit setup.

Of course the idea is far better than any attempt at it would be and I have no
idea how we'd move everything that's been packed into DC to a new location.
Given the amount of sea level rise we're probably going to see though there's
going to have to be some pretty intense engineering to keep DC as it is.

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whoisjuan
OMG, what a bunch of conjecture and bullshit, starting with the ridiculous
title. Amazon (or any corporation) doesn't need to be located in D.C to lobby
the shit out of whatever they want. That's a complete no-sense.

Being in D.C might make some difference in hiring people that have special
experience/skills/clearances working with the government, and of course,
Amazon being Amazon wants to sell stuff to the government. It would be stupid
of them not to. I'm pretty sure that's the extent of it.

This person thinks that we are still living like in the days of the Founders
where people used horses and shit. Newsflash: We live in 2019, and we have
airplanes and the internet. The geographic boundaries between government and
corporate America stopped mattering a long time ago.

