If Amazon calls for HQ2, hang up, cities
Amazon’s exercise in crony capitalism is back in the headlines. According to story this month in the Wall Street Journal, the company made hundreds of calls to cities rejected by the company as potential sites of the company’s second headquarters to let them know why they were rejected.
While many of the cities seem to be taking Amazon’s criticisms to heart and are considering overhauling how they do things accordingly, governments across the country shouldn’t be so eager to please big corporations for the mere sake of pleasing big corporations and reorganizing themselves toward that end.
“They should be looking to build their own regional economies and not trying to let any large company to tell them what to do,” Richard Florida, a professor at the University of Toronto, told the WSJ.
As anyone who has watched the at times embarrassing bidding war for Amazon’s HQ2 should probably know, Amazon isn’t looking out for the best interests of wherever it builds its next headquarters.
It’s looking out for itself.
As a private company, that’s perfectly fine and perfectly reasonable. But Amazon has been masterful at manipulating cities, counties and states to offer millions, even billions worth of subsidies, from tax credits to propertytax abatements to special workarounds of onerous regulations and permitting schemes.
Naturally, even ostensibly progressive California got caught up into the frenzy, with Governor Brown offering hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies if the company set up somewhere in the Golden State.
At the end of the day, what Amazon is after is a location governed by politicians willing to bend over backward, at taxpayers’ expense, of course, for the sake of Amazon.
By the end of Amazon’s protracted, nationwide hustle of cities in the name of finding the right location for HQ2, residents of whichever place ends up selected will be right to wonder if their government works for them or works for Amazon.
Such crony capitalism is a perversion of the free market and our systems of government.
Since we can all agree what in the end this is all about, cities getting calls from Amazon for explanations or pitches should do one thing and one thing only: hang up. — Los Angeles Daily News,
Digital First Media
By the end of Amazon’s protracted, nationwide hustle of cities in the name of finding the right location for HQ2, residents of whichever place ends up selected will be right to wonder if their government works for them or works for Amazon.