Every once in a while people behave rationally in places where you would never expect it. As all of America knows, Amazon has been soliciting bribes to locate a new facility somewhere in our benighted land. Cities and towns throughout America have been competing to see who can throw the most money at Amazon in order to get mainly low paying jobs, some of which may actually be filled by locals, that will never return enough to their local economies to offset the bribes they have to pay. Insanity has been defined as doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result each time. By that measure, most of our cities are insane. Consider, as one small example, the way they throw money at sports teams. Looking at my home town of Hartford on that one.
Anyway, some cities, or their residents, are not only dropping out of the competition to offer Amazon the highest bribe, they are actively pleading with Amazon to get their bribe elsewhere. Consider this from the Little Rock Chamber of Commerce:
But when we started really thinking about what our future would look like, we realized it would probably never work out between us.
You want 50,000 employees for your new campus. We have a sizable, resourceful workforce, but if we were to concentrate them here, it would be a bummer. Our lack of traffic and ease of getting around would be totally wrecked, and we can’t sacrifice that for you.
You want on-site mass transit at HQ2. Here, there are many transit options that fit our city perfectly, and thanks to our compact urban footprint, many of our residents can easily get to the office on foot, on a bike or just by a quick drive. It would be cool if we could offer that, but we simply can’t do that just to make you happy.
Amazon, you’ve got so much going for you, and you’ll find what you’re looking for. But it’s just not us.
Of course, insanity is still the norm. The District of Columbia is actually offering to pay bribes directly to Amazon employees relocating from elsewhere, thus providing an incentive to minimize the number of jobs created for locals. Those, by the way, would be the good jobs. The locals will be the drones in the warehouses, getting great benefits like ambulances waiting outside to bring them to the hospital when they collapse in overheated warehouses (air conditioning is expensive!) from heat exhaustion. Okay, that particular benefit is no longer needed, after Amazon was shamed into doing something about it, but how about refusing to pay workers for the time they have to spend being screened after they leave work.
It is rarely a good idea to engage in corporate bribery. If this were a sane country, Congress would legislate against it, much to the relief of the states and cities paying the bribes. It is a particularly bad idea when dealing with Amazon, inasmuch as Jeff Bezos is evil. (More evil here.)
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