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Governments should compete for residents, not businesses

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Re: Governments should compete for residents, not businesses

#171

Post by SllX »

xxpor wrote: post #139
hermannj314 wrote: post #16

I've owned houses in two cities in my life. One called itself "A developer-friendly community" and the other "A healthy community" The cities were organized around their taglines. One was 300 years old and focused on parks, trails, conservancy, and community centers. The other a younger city focused on growth and sprawl, tax abatements, and new businesses. You should live where the government aligns with your phase o…

The problem is when the "healthy community" is close to the central city and has good transit. Metro areas are networks, nothing happens in isolation.

Correct, but municipal corporations are generally[1] legal monopolies on the land within their jurisdiction. San Francisco has no legal jurisdiction over what Daly City or San Mateo County does, let alone Atherton and vice versa.

[1] Your State may vary.

Re: Governments should compete for residents, not businesses

#172

Post by paradox242 »

cyclecount wrote: post #6

This line of thinking comes up often on HN but it ignores the central reason for governments to enact borders, a rather modern invention. Governments (at the behest of businesses) enforce borders so that labor cannot effectively organise. A border exists often for workers only, but is mostly a legal fiction that corporations can easily navigate. The most common example for the Americans reading this is NAFTA, which m…

I am confused about your use of the word 'borders' in this context. As long as there have been states there has been a concept of sovereign territory and so there have been borders, even if it was somewhat fuzzy where exactly that line was in real space.

Large companies are able to navigate the border issues because they are able to make deals with a government and can (at least promise) to bring in a lot of investment and wealth that the government might be able to realize in taxes, either directly from the company's revenues, or indirectly through other businesses and property that grows along with the company's investment.

That company's can do this more effectively than individuals is less a function of some kind of cynical conspiracy to cut out of the worker (though that might be a side benefit that both sides appreciate), than it is a simple pragmatic response to the fact that it is much easier to deal with a small number of people about a large sum of money than it is with a large number of people about small sums of money.

This is similar to why the U.S. government is so amenable to working so often with dictatorships to secure it's international interests. They can work with (or influence or bribe) a single person or small group to make large deals quickly and without having to worry about the messy politics and oversight associated with a democratic government that has to approve major policy decisions.

Re: Governments should compete for residents, not businesses

#173

Post by gameman144 »

fnordpiglet wrote: post #156
gameman144 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we're talking about humans who are choosing to leave their country for a better place. What makes the US a better place? What keeps other countries from being a better place?

The constitution and bill of rights and the effective government the founding fathers created that ensures the continuation of those law bodies. The lack of those blessings from the past is what prevents others. It’s no fault of the people who live here or there today for the situation we are in. If George Washington had accepted a crown when offered we would be just as screwed up.

> The lack of those blessings from the past is what prevents others.

I think this strongly discounts the agency of individuals. In our time these are certainly blessings, but they had to be fought for by their contemporaries.

Re: Governments should compete for residents, not businesses

#174

Post by rajin444 »

fnordpiglet wrote: post #145
gameman144 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm interested here, as I'm inclined to disagree pretty strongly. How would you prevent the erosion of rights or culture by a group with a bigger population? For instance, have a few hundred thousand Americans move to Cuba and vote to have Cuba secede to the US? Or a few hundred thousand mainland Chinese citizens move to Taiwan and do the same? While it's definitely nice to keep migration smooth and easy, it seems li…

The same way you would with a bigger population for any reason. There’s an added bonus that if rights erode, people can simply leave to somewhere less oppressive. People can’t leave oppressive places due to borders. Less oppressive places may become oppressive but that would drive people elsewhere. I’d use the US as an example. In a real sense the US is a collection of small countries with a federal system and free r…

> Cultural erosion is IMO nativism and bias

Are you implying that non natives are inherently better than natives?

One of the hallmarks of declining empires is importing people - not to say those people are better or worse, but mixing diverse peoples together is extremely hard. It has to be done slowly and carefully.

> Changing populace doesn’t change a culture any more than time does

I don’t see how you can look at the history of anyone anywhere and believe this.

Re: Governments should compete for residents, not businesses

#175

Post by rootusrootus »

fnordpiglet wrote: post #145
gameman144 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm interested here, as I'm inclined to disagree pretty strongly. How would you prevent the erosion of rights or culture by a group with a bigger population? For instance, have a few hundred thousand Americans move to Cuba and vote to have Cuba secede to the US? Or a few hundred thousand mainland Chinese citizens move to Taiwan and do the same? While it's definitely nice to keep migration smooth and easy, it seems li…

The same way you would with a bigger population for any reason. There’s an added bonus that if rights erode, people can simply leave to somewhere less oppressive. People can’t leave oppressive places due to borders. Less oppressive places may become oppressive but that would drive people elsewhere. I’d use the US as an example. In a real sense the US is a collection of small countries with a federal system and free r…

> In a real sense the US is a collection of small countries with a federal system and free right of migration.

Before that comparison works, you have to eliminate the Constitution and all of the protections that come with it.

Re: Governments should compete for residents, not businesses

#176

Post by nhchris »

fnordpiglet wrote: post #159
nhchris wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because this was so rare that the destination countries didn't see it as a problem. And when it did happen en masse, it was usually war.

That’s not true at all, there were often famines and other natural disasters that made it impossible to live in a region and people just migrated. It happened constantly. Watching the children in Ethiopia starving to death, I couldn’t help but wonder how we felt forcing people to live in an emergent desert to death by starvation was better if we just wrote a song about it - “We are the world.” If that were true, why…

Ethiopia is an interesting example, but not of scarcity. While my country's population grew by a mere 40% since 1950 (and has been stagnant the last few decades), Ethiopia's grew by 534%, and shows no signs of slowing: https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/ethiopia-popu...

Had we grown at their pace, we'd also be experiencing famines.

As for why they couldn't leave - you can ask their neighbors. The West is not the only destination.

Re: Governments should compete for residents, not businesses

#177

Post by btilly »

RetpolineDrama wrote: post #149
btilly wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no idea whether it is true where you are, but it certainly IS true where I am. First, commercial property taxes in California are generally higher than residential. Which is an incentive to attract business, not residents. https://www.hechtgroup.com/the-different-taxes-imposed-on-co... Second, you're seriously underestimating the cost of roads. As https://www.amazon.com/High-Cost-Free-Parking-Updated/dp/193...…

>First, commercial property taxes in California are generally higher than residential. Sure, but businesses making _more_ for an area doesn't mean residential areas aren't profitable. >the bit of road your car is parked on usually costs more than the car. Sensational nonsense. ~100sq ft of black tar asphalt, barring some kind of bananna republic corruption scheme, could never cost _more_ than an average automobile. T…

Yes, you get taxes from a residential area. But if you get MORE from a business area, guess which one cities are going to be incentivized to attract?

About the road, a standard parking space is 180 square feet. At $100 per square foot for the land that's $18,000.

Now compare to the car. Per https://hedgescompany.com/blog/2022/02/how-old-are-cars/ the median car is about 12 years old. If you want to buy a 2011 car right now, https://www.truecar.com/used-cars-for-sale/listings/year-201... shows you a whole lot of options. All are substantially less than that.

The median car really does cost less than the space where it is parked. For more on this, see https://streetwidths.its.ucla.edu/

Re: Governments should compete for residents, not businesses

#178

Post by lotsofpulp »

bigger_inside wrote: post #158
lotsofpulp wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if someone born in a war torn region with few resources and no organized society would have the same opinion. It is just a statement of fact that the geographic location a person is born is coincidence.

the term "coincidence" is weird. I read it as somehow relying on the idea that first, there is a person (like a soul?), and then, that soul is "coincidentally" put somewhere. Correct me if you think that's strange, but the idea of "coincidence" to me only seems to make sense if the person somehow predates the location of birth. But if that's not the case, as I would guess most of us believe, then there is no coincide…

I did not read it all as you did. “Coincidence” in welshwelsh’s comment was used to indicate who is deserving of the benefits of living in place X rather than place Y, where it can be reasonably concluded that X is overall better to live in than Y.

I disagree with nhchris’s response of

> It is their inheritance, their birthright, the fruit of their ancestors' labors.

Because there is no natural law that something is “your” inheritance, birthright, or that you have claim to the fruit of your ancestors’ labor. Might makes right is how nature works, and it just so happens that you were born in a time and place where certain “rights” are being upheld, and there is not a stronger party that wants and is able to take them from you.

You can even go further and replace place X and Y with parents X and Y.

Re: Governments should compete for residents, not businesses

#179

Post by chewz »

That was true until end of XIX century. Especially so in XIX century. For a person a move was quite simple, sometimes just few miles over the border. But moving a business, brick-and-mortar business like coal-mine or brewery was hard. That kept personal taxes low and business taxes high.

But XX century changed that.

Re: Governments should compete for residents, not businesses

#180

Post by rootusrootus »

FpUser wrote: post #38
vorpalhex wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humans stopped being migratory about 12,000 years ago. You probably don't want criminals to freely move into your country. You probably want a country that gets funded by taxes (both short term and long term). No country in the world maintains open borders. Everytime there has been mass unorganized migration it has been a humanitarian disaster. Platitudes only work on paper.

>"Humans stopped being migratory about 12,000 years ago" Up until recently ( relatively ) a person could pretty much move to other country without much fuzz.

In the last 70 years alone we've added over 5 billion people. In the 1800s there were vast swaths of temperate, fertile land that were basically unclaimed. Moving around was no big deal at that scale.

Now we have people everywhere (that doesn't suck; and even some places that do). We have social programs and expensive infrastructure. The world is very different now than even 100 years ago.

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