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Why Don’t the 20 Cities on Amazon's HQ2 Shortlist Collectively Bargain?

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Re: Why Don’t the 20 Cities on Amazon's HQ2 Shortlist Collectively Bargain?

#161

Post by NegativeLatency »

DSingularity wrote: post #135
untog wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Homelessness is not Amazon's problem. Not directly, no. But Amazon is based in a city that has a large homeless population. It is in the interest of their employees to see that population fall, therefore it also ought to be in Amazon's interest. > Automation is good. Do you want us to ride horses to work? Of course it is. But I see this reaction a lot - that anyone asking questions about our automated future is som…

If they refuse to answer the points we are raising by attacking us trying represent us as regressive idiots then attack them back. Make them feel like greedy pigs willing to let the world starve to make more money. Is there any doubt that if Amazon or any corporation would not hesitate to eliminate 90% of the jobs in this world if they had the means to do it cheaper with robotics/ai/cloud tech? They couldn't care les…

Sharpen up your pitchforks.

Re: Why Don’t the 20 Cities on Amazon's HQ2 Shortlist Collectively Bargain?

#162

Post by mynegation »

apercu wrote: post #55
mynegation wrote: post #45

I commend the position of Toronto's mayor John Tory who said (I am paraphrasing here): "no tax breaks, if you come - come based on our merits as a city alone". Toronto is not likely to get Amazon for various reason (political climate being probably more important than tax breaks)

To clarify, you mean the current US political climate? In all honesty, unless Amazon was going to go to Mississauga or Markham or something like that, I'd rather not have them. We need more jobs in the burbs, not more pressures on the inadequate Toronto infrastructure.

Sauga and Markham are outside of Toronto municipality and - strictly speaking - are already not on the list. From the shortlist, they do not look like something Amazon is shooting for. They are in Seattle proper, not Kent or Everett.

Yes, I mean US political climate. Ontario Provincial govt created the commission headed by Ed Clark and issued a bunch of statements[1], but I had the impression that above city level they are like whatever.

[1] https://news.ontario.ca/opo/en/2018/01/statement-from-premie...

Re: Why Don’t the 20 Cities on Amazon's HQ2 Shortlist Collectively Bargain?

#163

Post by walshemj »

apercu wrote: post #53
zaroth wrote: post #28

I completely disagree with the “race to the bottom” framing of the idea that cities shouldn’t compete to provide the best services for the commercial enterprises which reside there. At the 50-75 year timeframe we are talking about at least hundreds of billions of dollars of economic value, if not trillions. The clustering effect of becoming Silicon Valley 2 cannot be overstated. My personal opinion is cities should b…

Devils advocate: It's possible that Amazon will be a drain on a region. The cost of housing goes up for everyone. The best and the brightest of the region get sucked back to HQ1 The startup ecosystem in the region gets drained to work at/for Amazon

Or it creates its own mini environment of tech companies form by alumni of amazon - one large company tends to do that.

Take games workshop in nottingham there is now a large number of spinoff games and mini companies formed by ex GW alumni

Re: Why Don’t the 20 Cities on Amazon's HQ2 Shortlist Collectively Bargain?

#164

Post by Bartweiss »

mynegation wrote: post #45

I commend the position of Toronto's mayor John Tory who said (I am paraphrasing here): "no tax breaks, if you come - come based on our merits as a city alone". Toronto is not likely to get Amazon for various reason (political climate being probably more important than tax breaks)

> Toronto is not likely to get Amazon for various reason

Which is the reason this competition happens. The top few candidate cities could all call truce and trust that they'll come out ahead over many iterations, but cities that expect they're not in the running without perks will never win the collective bargaining game. So they put up money, and the original strongest players respond to secure their positions, and the race begins.

Re: Why Don’t the 20 Cities on Amazon's HQ2 Shortlist Collectively Bargain?

#165

Post by walshemj »

peterwwillis wrote: post #65
zaroth wrote: post #28

I completely disagree with the “race to the bottom” framing of the idea that cities shouldn’t compete to provide the best services for the commercial enterprises which reside there. At the 50-75 year timeframe we are talking about at least hundreds of billions of dollars of economic value, if not trillions. The clustering effect of becoming Silicon Valley 2 cannot be overstated. My personal opinion is cities should b…

Nobody is arguing that. They're arguing that the states are giving away money. Not that they aren't providing services. And nobody thinks Amazon moving to their town will create a silicon valley 2. Plenty of cities host huge employers. They don't become magnets for that industry. They just get fat tax breaks. Many cities actually get worse with these giant companies throwing their weight around. Under Armor is single…

Actually they do motor plants support a vast number of JIT subcontractors - only Tesla seems to have gone back to vertical integration.

Re: Why Don’t the 20 Cities on Amazon's HQ2 Shortlist Collectively Bargain?

#166

Post by XR0CSWV3h3kZWg »

40acres wrote: post #103
s73ver_ wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Homelessness is not Amazon's problem." But it is the problem of the city. They absolutely need to keep this in mind while negotiating with Amazon, who has a reputation for driving housing prices sky high, thus exacerbating the homelessness problem. "Automation is good. Do you want us to ride horses to work?" Automation is neutral, as it does cost people jobs, not all of whom can be retrained for something else. It a…

Amazon also provides high wage workers who are taxed on their income, and who generate economic activity which can also be taxed and used by municipalities to try to solve homelessness. On net I wonder what the benefit / determent of Amazon moving to a city would have on homelessness.

> Amazon also provides high wage workers who are taxed on their income

Washington has no income tax.

> who generate economic activity which can also be taxed and used by municipalities to try to solve homelessness.

Unfortunately a lot of the taxes that can be levied in Seattle are fairly regressive, so it's easy to end up in a situation where property taxes are raised to generate funds to solve homelessness. It's easy to imagine inefficiencies or fund diversion such that low priced housing raises in cost faster than the funds given to help homelessness. Even worse would be the situation where those funds only help in the form of food & shelters for homeless people.

Re: Why Don’t the 20 Cities on Amazon's HQ2 Shortlist Collectively Bargain?

#167

Post by walshemj »

mynegation wrote: post #45

I commend the position of Toronto's mayor John Tory who said (I am paraphrasing here): "no tax breaks, if you come - come based on our merits as a city alone". Toronto is not likely to get Amazon for various reason (political climate being probably more important than tax breaks)

cough cough Vancouver aka Hollywood north

Re: Why Don’t the 20 Cities on Amazon's HQ2 Shortlist Collectively Bargain?

#168

Post by Bartweiss »

squozzer wrote: post #36

If the benefits would split 20 ways, collective bargaining might work. But it doesn't seem that they would, especially given the geographical dispersion of the finalists. Regions (such as US Northeast, or Nashville - Atlanta - Raleigh) might be able to assemble a useful coalition to share the bennies and any pains. Not sure if BOS and NYC wouldn't stab each other in the back.

> If the benefits would split 20 ways, collective bargaining might work.

I'm shocked to not see this objection in the article or elsewhere in the comment section. If the shortlist were final and cooperation could be enforced, collective bargaining would still only work if the top 20 cities all had a similar chance without perks.

As is, some of the cities would obviously be out of the running in a no-perks race, so collective bargaining (even over many iterations with many companies) is a clear loser for them. That undermines the entire proposal. It could be repaired if strong contenders like DC agreed to let weaker contenders offer perks up to parity with the strongest players, but that's vastly less plausible or easy to calculate than "no perks".

Re: Why Don’t the 20 Cities on Amazon's HQ2 Shortlist Collectively Bargain?

#169

Post by walshemj »

alkonaut wrote: post #127
doggydogs94 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t let ... The only one that can do that is the US Supreme Court.

Somehow it always ends up there, like that's a "legal no go". I.e. "that would have to go through the supreme court" or "that's the constitution". I realize it's hard to change some things (like how is Gerrymandering for political views allowed?) but is it that hard that it's meaningless to attempt? Doesn't that mean (in the case of the Gerrymandering example) that US democracy is fundamentally broken AND can't be re…

Passing an amendment to the constitution is very hard.

Re: Why Don’t the 20 Cities on Amazon's HQ2 Shortlist Collectively Bargain?

#170

Post by tdb7893 »

lucas_membrane wrote: post #59

Large corporations often make deals with other large corporations, and they prosper. Workers used to do better when a larger percentage of them collectively bargained. But somehow, the possibility that citizens, who are represented by various local governments, would use those governments to cooperate with each other across the lines on the map sounds like science-fiction and is disparaged as far-fetched and unworkab…

I'm not really sure how they could negotiate together. They could cooperate somewhat but if a city looks like they weren't going to get the HQ it would be in their best interest to leave their collective bargaining pact and try to undercut it to get the HQ.
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