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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?

#231

Post by dragonwriter »

Johnny555 wrote: post #230
Chaebixi wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a binary choice. The sweet spot is in the middle.

but sometimes it is a binary choice. Leaders can see their community dying after the former big industry left -- with lots of luck and years of a strong economy they may be able to attract some replacement industries that keep the town prosperous (but not not overly so). Or they can hit the "Amazon lottery", bringing in billions of dollars of investment and 50,000 high paid jobs (plus all of the ancillary jobs to sup…

> and 50,000 high paid jobs

Er, “as many as 50,000 high-paying jobs” is what Amazon claims HQ2 is planned to grow to over an unspecified time horizon. “As many as...” is marketing weasel words for “for some number definitely not exceeding, and probably much smaller than...”; it sets an upper bound, but counts on people treating it as an expected level.

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

#232

Post by Chaebixi »

Robotbeat wrote: post #68
apercu wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Cost of housing going up also increases the wealth of homeowners in the area. This is not purely bad.

> Cost of housing going up also increases the wealth of homeowners in the area. This is not purely bad.

The local government represents the current residents, not future ones. Raising house prices could be a windfall for current homeowners, but it could negative for the broader group of local residents, which will likely have a lot of renters.

Heavily inflated house prices could also be bad for the current homeowners, who may get stuck in their current home because they could no longer afford the price difference for a needed upgrade. Their kids may be forced to move away because they can't find homes.

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

#233

Post by Chaebixi »

Cyberdog wrote: post #154
Animats wrote: post #38

(suggested) competing cities form a non-aggression pact That's been suggested before at the state level. But it runs into a Constitutional limitation. Interstate compacts have to be approved by Congress. Article I, Section 10: "No State shall, without the Consent of Congress ... enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State." US cities are legally parts of states, not standalone entities. Trying to get an an…

Does this apply to municipalities?

>> US cities are legally parts of states, not standalone entities.

A city is a municipality.

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

#234

Post by krapp »

untog wrote: post #101
matchbok wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Homelessness is not Amazon's problem. Automation is good. Do you want us to ride horses to work? Agreed. Agreed.

> 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…

>It is in the interest of their employees to see that population fall, therefore it also ought to be in Amazon's interest.

Amazon is not a humanitarian organization. They are only concerned about the interests of their employees to the degree that the law requires, and their only interest, otherwise is in increasing shareholder value. Amazon doesn't care about the homeless... except maybe as a potential source of cheap labor.

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

#235

Post by zanny »

matchbok wrote: post #64
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…

Homelessness is not Amazon's problem. Automation is good. Do you want us to ride horses to work? Agreed. Agreed.

Homelessness is only not Amazons problem because corporate charters annul the company of any moral responsibility.

Amazon had 135B revenue and 540k employees in 2016. By comparison (according to the UN) that would have made Amazon the 60th largest economy in 2016, after Hungary (138B / 9.5m people) and before Ukraine (132B / 42m, which has been dropping considerably since).

That is an insane amount of wealth to throw around to influence all manner of people for the sake of a corporate charter. Not only that, but they are only "responsible" for 540k people versus the millions other countries of comparable scale have.

I'm not saying companies should act as governments. I am saying having businesses of that scale is highly distortionary in how governments around them behave, and since the aim of a public corporation is to profit, distortions will be made in the name of profit.

The fact that Amazon is almost certainly more influential on the international stage than Hungary or Ukraine should be horrifying, because nations are at least usually responsible to their people. Amazon is in no way responsible to its employees, nations it operates in, or even its own executives. Its only responsible to the largest stakeholders that own it, and that is terrible for the rest of us.

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

#236

Post by Chaebixi »

Johnny555 wrote: post #230
Chaebixi wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a binary choice. The sweet spot is in the middle.

but sometimes it is a binary choice. Leaders can see their community dying after the former big industry left -- with lots of luck and years of a strong economy they may be able to attract some replacement industries that keep the town prosperous (but not not overly so). Or they can hit the "Amazon lottery", bringing in billions of dollars of investment and 50,000 high paid jobs (plus all of the ancillary jobs to sup…

> Leaders can see their community dying after the former big industry left -- with lots of luck and years of a strong economy they may be able to attract some replacement industries that keep the town prosperous (but not not overly so).

That's overly hopeful. I doubt Amazon will seriously consider a dying ex-company town that needs the investment. My bet it's going to pick someplace that's already doing pretty well, overall.

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

#237

Post by nugget »

aeorgnoieang wrote: post #145
PKop wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What on Earth makes you think they aren't doing this? There's no single corp announcing a possible move to anywhere as big as Amazon to illustrate the incentive to compete, at almost any price. In other words, construct a hypothetical move for a hypothetical corporation to some example town, and I'm sure that town could come up with an incentive package that would be beneficial to its citizens in place of having the…

I am almost perfectly certain that they're not doing this because I was referring to all of the organizations, and individuals, that are not as big as Amazon. I'm claiming your argument is suspicious because it seems to only really apply to organizations of Amazon's size. Maybe you disagree, but it sure doesn't seem like any cities or towns are interested in luring an Amazons worth of businesses and tax-payers that a…

New York State offers to waive all state income taxes for something like 10 years if you move there and start a new business in one of their special economic zones. There are more of these programs out there than people realize.

https://esd.ny.gov/startup-ny-program

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

#239

Post by bsder »

matchbok wrote: post #64
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…

Homelessness is not Amazon's problem. Automation is good. Do you want us to ride horses to work? Agreed. Agreed.

> Automation is good. Do you want us to ride horses to work?

I will challenge you on this.

Automation is efficient.

The problem is that maximally efficient is minimally robust.

Cars are wonderful, unless something disastrous happens to your roads. Then horses are better.

Amazon just-in-time delivery is great. Until everybody needs the same thing--at which point local grocery stores with inventory matter.

Efficient doesn't always equate to good.

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

#240

Post by ravitation »

bomb199 wrote: post #214
philwelch wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cars are pretty terrible, but horses are even worse, if you can imagine it. Think about all the traffic problems with cars, except the street is covered ankle-deep in manure. And you can't install catalytic converters in their butts to reduce pollution, either.

I'd like to think if our main form of transport was horses, we'd have solved this problem.

We'd have invented cars... And that's what we did.
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