Because cooperation only happens in the repeated version of the prisoner's dilemma.
Why Don’t the 20 Cities on Amazon's HQ2 Shortlist Collectively Bargain?
191–200 of 286 posts
Re: Why Don’t the 20 Cities on Amazon's HQ2 Shortlist Collectively Bargain?
#192If you don't want cities and states to beg companies with tax exemptions then you should not have such tax exemption ability in the first place.
Re: Why Don’t the 20 Cities on Amazon's HQ2 Shortlist Collectively Bargain?
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
Homelessness is not Amazon's problem. Automation is good. Do you want us to ride horses to work? Agreed. Agreed.
I certainly don't want you riding a car into a crowded downtown. I personally walked to work in downtown Seattle (to Amazon, ironically). I'd vote for any local candidate who pushed for an aggressive pedestrian-only zone in the city with a strategy for expanding mass transit access and park and rides. The technology for affordable mass transit is almost a century old; I think incremental, sustainable progress on that…
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.
Re: Why Don’t the 20 Cities on Amazon's HQ2 Shortlist Collectively Bargain?
#194Earlier quoted context omitted.
Another confounding factor is that the workforce tends to be left leaning. Left leaning population, plus new money for taxes means more social services for the homeless. More social services means homeless from less accommodating communities will move in. I'd also be curious in a study on Amazon's effect on the homeless.
> More social services means homeless from less accommodating communities will move in. I don't know why this point seems to escape people in SF, LA, Seattle, etc. If you're homeless, you're gonna want to be where the most benefits and relaxed attitudes toward homelessness are. It's not hard to understand why this problem is at its worst in the most progressive cities.
These are all cities without overly harsh Summer and Winter seasons. That makes it easier to be outside year round. The destitute homeless in less favorable regions aren't generally mobile enough to migrate to these places.
Re: Why Don’t the 20 Cities on Amazon's HQ2 Shortlist Collectively Bargain?
#195I 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…
>It’s completely irrational anti-capitalistic knee jerking to whine that cities shouldn’t be working hard to support HQ2 in their backyard.
It's completely capitalist loyalty to business above community to dismiss every concern about selling the farm to Amazon as "whining".
Re: Why Don’t the 20 Cities on Amazon's HQ2 Shortlist Collectively Bargain?
#196Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because there are tremendous social costs to intentionally causing housing shortages. https://www.axios.com/the-great-stagnation-americans-stopped... https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/04/business/how-anti-growth-...
Right, but we're not talking about housing, we're talking about Amazon.
Well, no, you're talking about NIMBYism.
But bringing in Amazon is going to necessitate adding housing stock, and that just doesn't happen in like Boston that already have housing issues and rampant NIMBYism.
Re: Why Don’t the 20 Cities on Amazon's HQ2 Shortlist Collectively Bargain?
#197Earlier quoted context omitted.
Homelessness is not Amazon's problem. Automation is good. Do you want us to ride horses to work? Agreed. Agreed.
Technology is why we have the prosperity we have. There are plenty of countries without automation. And many allow anybody to immigrate to them. But don't expect air conditioning You'll have to hire a person to wave you with a fan. And don't expect those job-killing tubes to bring you your water. Hire a water carrier like everybody else. And in the truly pure countries, be prepared to drag your stuff with you without…
I've downvoted you because you're using extremely hyperbolic arguments that I don't feel add to the discussion.
Re: Why Don’t the 20 Cities on Amazon's HQ2 Shortlist Collectively Bargain?
#198Large 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…
> Workers used to do better when a larger percentage of them collectively bargained. What I find interesting is that the unionization rate in Canada today is more or less on-par with the peak unionization in the USA, and is one of the strongest unionized countries in the world. Yet, I constantly hear Canadian workers complain about how they are unfairly compensated compared to Americans, where unionization has practi…
In Germany, there are very well paid mostly manual labor jobs in unionized industries, especially at the big car manufacturers. In non-unionized industries, wages can be much lower, down to about 30% of what workers in the car industry earn. That is before taxes, though. After taxes, the difference is about 2:1.
There is also data showing that unionized workers get about 1% more of a scheduled raise each year.
Re: Why Don’t the 20 Cities on Amazon's HQ2 Shortlist Collectively Bargain?
#199Earlier quoted context omitted.
Homelessness is not Amazon's problem. Automation is good. Do you want us to ride horses to work? Agreed. Agreed.
I certainly don't want you riding a car into a crowded downtown. I personally walked to work in downtown Seattle (to Amazon, ironically). I'd vote for any local candidate who pushed for an aggressive pedestrian-only zone in the city with a strategy for expanding mass transit access and park and rides. The technology for affordable mass transit is almost a century old; I think incremental, sustainable progress on that…
>I certainly don't want you riding a car into a crowded downtown. I personally walked to work in downtown Seattle (to Amazon, ironically). I'd vote for any local candidate who pushed for an aggressive pedestrian-only zone in the city with a strategy for expanding mass transit access and park and rides. The technology for affordable mass transit is almost a century old; I think incremental, sustainable progress on that technology is better than anything the Tesla has to offer. Wide-spread single-user cars are one of the worst things to happen to this country.
You responded to a claim about automation, not cars. Trains are automated. Buses are automated. Please contain your virulent hatred for cars long enough to figure out what you're actually responding to.
Re: Why Don’t the 20 Cities on Amazon's HQ2 Shortlist Collectively Bargain?
#200Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 th…
Sorry I wasn't clear. Yes, I know they aren't considering the burbs. But if they were (Toronto burbs, at least Mississauga, are something like the 30th largest cities in NA)it would be better than jamming Amazon and 50k employees in to Toronto.