This City Hall, Brought to You by Amazon

I thought this would be the usual hair-rending about Amazon but really this is a disturbing piece about the view of corporations, need for jobs, and the disturbing approach local government thinks of such things. Worth a read.

I think economic competition between cities can be a healthy thing, but these sweepstakes style contests for things like corporate HQ’s, sporting teams/events, etc seem to usually get really out of hand. It feels like there’s some committee within a government who’s only goal is to win the prize. Whether the people of the city/state/whatever actually _want_ to win is entirely beside the point.

The Fresno example is especially disturbing. I’d really like to read a constitutional analysis of that kind of thing, it feels like a vast overreach of authority to offer so much autonomy to Amazon.