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Comment by hcg | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, but just because this happens doesn't mean we shouldn't be upset about it. This is companies strongarming governments into giving them tax breaks. It's robbing society to enrich a few people at the top.

Amazon is following the Boeing example. I fully expect Washington state to give away massive amounts of money the same way they did before.

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I admit not being very upset about it. How are they strongarming governments? A government says no and everyone moves on. Or are you saying communities can't get businesses without this strongarming? I don't believe that. I recognize the art of both sides shopping for the best deal for themselves, and with how many of these governments operate against their companies, it's definitely bidirectional. The leverage does seem to be tipped in favor of the largest governments and largest companies, but the general practice seems reasonable.

The problem seems to be less that the governments are being “strong armed” and more that the people running the government are incentivized to satisfy their own interests when dealing with the corporations, and those interests do not necessarily align with the constituents that they supposedly represent.

Yup, this definitely exists and misrepresentation is a real problem in all legislative contexts. We can only ask their citizens to care and make change (assuming elections are run legally). Being able to affect this change locally is very important and why these abatement decisions deserve to remain in their hands.

Having limited term length elected / appointed government figures responsible for making these decisions, and then free to accept industry positions, is toxic.

If we really wanted to stamp this out, throw some serious sand in the revolving door gears.

This seems to be the way it works with professional sports teams. The city officials and the team owners are all sitting on the same side of the negotiating table and the public has no one sitting in their seat to represent their interests.

Do you have any examples of "many of these governments operate against their companies?" I'm intrigued by this because this isn't how government generally works at all at a local level. They usually work with these companies and give them sweetheart deals knowing that the money will not really come back to the city and the effect will happen years down the road. All the positives for them of working with the company and someone else deals with the issues later that are caused from tax breaks and other deals.

You can see it in auto sales rules against Tesla, alcohol and zoning restrictions that aren't subject to votes, grandfathering old businesses on all sorts of things like parking lot regulations to denials of permits based reasons like too many restaurants in the area, etc. Some may seem reasonable, some may not. The point is in a transaction, neither side has to accept concessions they are uncomfortable with. Quite often cities make laws that harm or destroy business. Even in cases that are subject to citizen vote, the tyranny of the majority can occur. That's what makes bargaining on both sides of the compromise entirely reasonable.

So you're right (and I forgot about it), cities have fought against Tesla but it was my understanding that the push for that was lobbying from the old-school car dealerships and car companies to keep things from changing that would negatively impact their businesses. I don't think most cities have a real dog in the fight and many would welcome new electric car service/business since it's mostly positives for them.

Am I wildly off here?

I believe this is generally done more at the state level (consumer protection), rather than city when it comes to "banning Tesla". It's not actually a ban against Tesla specifically though, although some might be. As I understand it, this generally goes way back to when dealerships were worried about an actual car company, such as Ford, opening their OWN dealerships, and selling them at a price that the other car dealerships couldn't afford, which would be easy to do if you're both the supplier and retailer. Given how the deck is massively stacked against them, it's quite a testiment to their products that they are doing as well as they are. https://www.engadget.com/2014/07/17/tesla-motors-us-sales/

Great comment and insightful. That makes sense.

Yeah, it's unfortunate that often the deck is stacked against a company that could really bring some massive benefit to people, but you're right that they've done surprisingly well against that anti-momentum.

I fully agree. Giving breaks in terms of property taxes directly affects our schools. So we're just shooting the upcoming generation in the foot to keep jobs here "today"

Washington state schools get plenty of money.

WA Supreme Court ruled that schools we not performing at the level demanded by the WA consitution. Funding might or might not be a part of that.

You're saying they get enough money so we should give large amounts of money to corporations? That seems wild and like corporate welfare for the sake of portioning out some money to corporations. Why give corporations a fast-lane to government money because school's are getting some money?

To be clear, is your argument really that schools have lots of money so corporations deserve to get some too?

There is a difference between giving money to corporations and not taking away money from corporations. I realize a lot of people have the opinion that not taking something they already have is equal to giving them a handout but it really isn't.

Boeing went through on their threat IIRC and decimated the economy of Wichita. Amazon has more power than municipal or even state governments in some respects in economic terms.

Why shouldn’t gov’t have to compete for business?

The only other alternative is to force companies to stay in an area, regardless of how attractive the business climate is.

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