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Apple Avoids Amazon’s Beauty Contest, Searches Secretly for New Campus

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Re: Apple Avoids Amazon’s Beauty Contest, Searches Secretly for New Campus

#111

Post by notatoad »

Karishma1234 wrote: post #84
kodablah wrote: post #26

I'm not sure comparing a second headquarters and a tech support site is apt. I'm not sure how loud the search is matters. WSJ is a joke. Look, I can twist words too: "While Amazon is clearer and open about employee counts and candidate locations for HQ2, Apple remains secret and opaque about any details even for small site". Abatements abound regardless, lets not treat the differences in culture between Amazon and Ap…

Amazon's beauty contest did seem completely counterintuitive to me. People with skin in the game are always in the know of things. Even if Amazon had not massively advertised its move cities and states would have worked hard to bring them to their shores. I did not understand why ordinary public had to be drawn into it. Your average joe is always going to oppose a disruption in his otherwise mundane and lazy life. Ap…

The part of me that likes giving big companies the benefit of the doubt wonders if amazon is intentionally trying to show how corrupt the process is by having such a big public competition for their hq2 site.

Even if they hadn't massively publicized it, the word would have gotten around to candidate cities and the same sort of bidding war would have occurred. So what benefit did amazon really accrue by creating a media frenzy around their hq2 bid process?

Re: Apple Avoids Amazon’s Beauty Contest, Searches Secretly for New Campus

#112

Post by vkou »

Pyxl101 wrote: post #109
vkou wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Seattle didn't get a single new tech job opening from any of the big-4 tech corps in the next five years (Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft), the city would be fine. It would be more then fine. There is no shortage of economic opportunity in it. Expanding their offices puts costs on existing city residents. It's all well and good that tens of thousands of new units to house these workers are being built, but tho…

> Expanding their offices puts costs on existing city residents. It's all well and good that tens of thousands of new units to house these workers are being built, but those units also require extra infrastructure funding. Property taxes and permits are designed to raise the funds needed to pay for infrastructure. Amazon pays them. According to the Seattle Times (1): > Amazon entities that own Seattle property are th…

> Property taxes and permits are designed to raise the funds needed to pay for infrastructure. Amazon pays them. According to the Seattle Times (1):

The share of property taxes that Amazon, and its employees pay do not cover the costs of building out new infrastructure to support them. It's basic mathematics.

Let's say that you and four of your friends live in a 5-bedroom house. Let's say that you all pay an equal share of rent, maintenance, etc. Let's say that I decide to move into your house...

And demand that we knock down an exterior wall, and build a sixth bedroom, and a second bathroom, to accommodate me (Because everyone needs a bedroom! And one bathroom doesn't cut it for 6 people - it barely supported 5!) And insist that all six of us split the cost of this construction equally.

You should be happy about this - the rent-payer base has increased! Now a sixth person is chipping into paying the groundskeeper to mow the lawn. Never mind the $83,333 construction bill that the five of you had to front.

It's bollocks, and it's the situation Seattle is currently in. Existing residents are expected to pick up the tab for new people moving into their neighbourhoods. Yes, taxable activity is rising faster then the cost of population, but so is the infrastructure bill. It's a lot cheaper to maintain a five-bedroom house in a steady-state, then to build an extra bedroom in it. It's a lot cheaper to maintain the city's existing infrastructure, then to expand it to meet this population growth.

The only solution is making it extremely expensive to upzone commercial spaces (Which will result in shenanigans - like packing more employees into less space), or by taxing tech firms directly.

Re: Apple Avoids Amazon’s Beauty Contest, Searches Secretly for New Campus

#113

Post by selectodude »

Silfen wrote: post #107
briandear wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Defrauding? That’s ridiculous.

I wouldn't use the word "defrauding," but there is a serious principal-agent problem. The localities that attract an Amazon or an Apple are likely to have winner's curse. That is, the highest bid (in terms of tax breaks and other concessions) for the new headquarters is likely to be from a place that incidentally overvalued the new HQ. The politicians usually know this, but don't care. They get a flashy, public "vict…

I don't think any of these cities are actively handing Amazon money, just not taxing them. None of the cities on the list absolutely NEED amazon to survive, so they're not going to completely overextend themselves.

Re: Apple Avoids Amazon’s Beauty Contest, Searches Secretly for New Campus

#114

Post by logicallee »

marksomnian wrote: post #85
tkxxx7 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think any JS can listen for the navigate-away event or changes to the URL without doing anything special - then just grab ‘window.href/window.location’ or something like that

I doubt that's how that works. What I suspect happened is that fullwsj.com instantly redirected to Facebook, which put up its interstitial page.

> What I suspect happened is that fullwsj.com instantly redirected to Facebook, which put up its interstitial page.

I wanted to reply "can someone check this" but I was like, come on how lazy can I be so I checked.

-> Yes, it redirects in the way you suggest.

Proof:

https://imgur.com/a/puTv5Ar

(Method: I just installed a redirect checker Chrome extension, the top one, called Redirect Check, lets me check a plain URL also which is what I had it check.)

Re: Apple Avoids Amazon’s Beauty Contest, Searches Secretly for New Campus

#115

Post by logicallee »

logicallee wrote: post #58
tkxxx7 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think any JS can listen for the navigate-away event or changes to the URL without doing anything special - then just grab ‘window.href/window.location’ or something like that

Wow, that would be super surprising. I wouldn't think I'm giving Facebook my next destination when I type it manually into the URL bar! Can someone confirm?

Update: this (what tkxxx7 suggests) is not what's happening. It's just a redirect.

Re: Apple Avoids Amazon’s Beauty Contest, Searches Secretly for New Campus

#116

Post by yardie »

briandear wrote: post #105
advisedwang wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The complaint isn't that Amazon is expanding into other locations. The complaint is that Amazon is using this to play cities off against each other. It's a race for the bottom designed to maximize gain for Amazon at the cost of the commons.

Cities can choose not to participate. Don’t like it, elect new officials.

And when the secret contract is signed? Can voters reneg on the deal considering they weren't consulted nor notified.

Re: Apple Avoids Amazon’s Beauty Contest, Searches Secretly for New Campus

#117

Post by moistoreos »

weberc2 wrote: post #46
kodablah wrote: post #26

I'm not sure comparing a second headquarters and a tech support site is apt. I'm not sure how loud the search is matters. WSJ is a joke. Look, I can twist words too: "While Amazon is clearer and open about employee counts and candidate locations for HQ2, Apple remains secret and opaque about any details even for small site". Abatements abound regardless, lets not treat the differences in culture between Amazon and Ap…

> WSJ is a joke I agree with the rest of your post, but no need to single out the WSJ. Compared to other major publications that regularly have editorialized articles submitted to this forum (e.g., NYT, WashPo, HuffPo, Slate, etc), WSJ is extraordinarily well-behaved. This kind of editorializing is a shame and deserves to be called out, but we should make sure we're calling it out across the board.

I concur. I subscribe. I think these writers must be young and wanted to accentuate the concealment of gov't deals. I would say this article could have used a few more revisions.

Re: Apple Avoids Amazon’s Beauty Contest, Searches Secretly for New Campus

#119

Post by s2g »

notatoad wrote: post #111
Karishma1234 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon's beauty contest did seem completely counterintuitive to me. People with skin in the game are always in the know of things. Even if Amazon had not massively advertised its move cities and states would have worked hard to bring them to their shores. I did not understand why ordinary public had to be drawn into it. Your average joe is always going to oppose a disruption in his otherwise mundane and lazy life. Ap…

The part of me that likes giving big companies the benefit of the doubt wonders if amazon is intentionally trying to show how corrupt the process is by having such a big public competition for their hq2 site. Even if they hadn't massively publicized it, the word would have gotten around to candidate cities and the same sort of bidding war would have occurred. So what benefit did amazon really accrue by creating a med…

If the public balks at giving out a massive tax break to one of the worlds biggest companies, run by the (publicly) richest man, then Amazon can just point at the city next door and say "Well they promised us X, but we really like you guys so we wanted to go with you".

Re: Apple Avoids Amazon’s Beauty Contest, Searches Secretly for New Campus

#120

Post by s2g »

selectodude wrote: post #113
Silfen wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't use the word "defrauding," but there is a serious principal-agent problem. The localities that attract an Amazon or an Apple are likely to have winner's curse. That is, the highest bid (in terms of tax breaks and other concessions) for the new headquarters is likely to be from a place that incidentally overvalued the new HQ. The politicians usually know this, but don't care. They get a flashy, public "vict…

I don't think any of these cities are actively handing Amazon money, just not taxing them. None of the cities on the list absolutely NEED amazon to survive, so they're not going to completely overextend themselves.

Chicago promised to give the taxes paid by employees back to Amazon.

It's disgusting.

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