Why Don’t the 20 Cities on Amazon's HQ2 Shortlist Collectively Bargain?

Re:Why Don’t the 20 Cities on Amazon's HQ2 Shortlist Collect... by tbirrell on Tuesday January 23, 2018 @01:50PM (#16216209)

As someone who will probably never work at Amazon, or in any way benefit from their presence, the issues of housing prices and infrastructure are important to me. I'm not willing to pay an effective Amazon-tax in both my rent and commute time for for the dubious honor of saying I live in the same city as HQ2.

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Re:Why Don’t the 20 Cities on Amazon's HQ2 Shortlist Collect... by TheCowboy on Tuesday January 23, 2018 @02:02PM (#16216323)

I'm not a fan of cities dishing out perks, but what you said amounts to NIMBYism. I'm sympathetic to those concerns but housing prices aren't solved by keeping out newcomers or being against development. There can also be an indirect income boost that comes with an increased demand for labor, and it can help make the local economy more robust.

I do think the concern about unforeseen infrastructure costs are warranted, especially if a city doesn't excel in urban planning or has problems with NIMBYism derailing good plans. But I think most of the cities on the shortlist are fair game and could handle a project of this scale.

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Re:Why Don’t the 20 Cities on Amazon's HQ2 Shortlist Collect... by dragonwriter on Tuesday January 23, 2018 @02:03PM (#16216348)

> housing prices aren't solved by keeping out newcomers or being against development.

Housing prices aren't solved by forcing homeowners to subsidize commercial development, either. Ml

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Re:Why Don’t the 20 Cities on Amazon's HQ2 Shortlist Collect... by apercu on Tuesday January 23, 2018 @02:23PM (#16216628)

What is the problem with NYMBYism? Why is that a bad word?

Because a bunch of jerks in SV won't let more housing go in?

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Re:Why Don’t the 20 Cities on Amazon's HQ2 Shortlist Collect... by ghaff on Tuesday January 23, 2018 @03:06PM (#16217109)

Because it's a cheap, lazy insult to throw out at people who have different preferences than you do. It originally applied more to things like power plants that we collectively need but that basically no one wants to live next to. But there's absolutely nothing wrong with a city not wanting an Amazon HQ because of its impact on current residents when plenty of other places do.

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Re:Why Don’t the 20 Cities on Amazon's HQ2 Shortlist Collect... by apercu on Tuesday January 23, 2018 @03:19PM (#16217250)

> Because it's a cheap, lazy insult to throw out at people who have different preferences than you do.

Agreed.

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Re:Why Don’t the 20 Cities on Amazon's HQ2 Shortlist Collect... by nerfhammer on Tuesday January 23, 2018 @04:30PM (#16217899)

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-...

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Re:Why Don’t the 20 Cities on Amazon's HQ2 Shortlist Collect... by apercu on Tuesday January 23, 2018 @04:35PM (#16217937)

Right, but we're not talking about housing, we're talking about Amazon.

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Re:Why Don’t the 20 Cities on Amazon's HQ2 Shortlist Collect... by melq on Tuesday January 23, 2018 @05:35PM (#16218511)

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.

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Re:Why Don’t the 20 Cities on Amazon's HQ2 Shortlist Collect... by tbirrell on Wednesday January 24, 2018 @02:36PM (#16225622)

That fair. However, Austin is already behind the curve and can't keep up with the current influx of people and companies, adding Amazon to the mix will simply exacerbate the problem. Thus my concern. Maybe it'll be a good thing 10 years down the road, but that'll be a tough 10 years and I'm not confident that Austin will even be able to get to that point.

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Re:Why Don’t the 20 Cities on Amazon's HQ2 Shortlist Collect... by skt5 on Tuesday January 23, 2018 @02:04PM (#16216352)

> "in any way benefit from their presence"

how did you reach that conclusion?

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Re:Why Don’t the 20 Cities on Amazon's HQ2 Shortlist Collect... by zhjansbnas on Tuesday January 23, 2018 @03:06PM (#16217106)

The whole point of cities is economic agglomeration. If you don’t want that, why live in a city at all?

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Re:Why Don’t the 20 Cities on Amazon's HQ2 Shortlist Collect... by tbirrell on Wednesday January 24, 2018 @02:34PM (#16225603)

Economic agglomeration is not bad, but if the city is unable to keep up with said agglomerating, then accelerating it is a bad idea. Austin is already behind the curve and can't keep up with the current influx of people and companies, adding Amazon to the mix will simply exacerbate the problem.

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Re:Why Don’t the 20 Cities on Amazon's HQ2 Shortlist Collect... by conanbatt on Tuesday January 23, 2018 @02:02PM (#16216333)

Its reasonable that if you are individually not profiting from it, you should vote against, but most people will benefit (every single landlord, lots of businesses that will sell stuff, and all the people that would move and get a job there). If it were to be put up to a vote, the vote would be positive. If it were to be put up for an economic analysis, the economic analysis would be positive.

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Re:Why Don’t the 20 Cities on Amazon's HQ2 Shortlist Collect... by s73ver_ on Tuesday January 23, 2018 @03:22PM (#16217276)

"but most people will benefit (every single landlord, lots of businesses that will sell stuff, and all the people that would move and get a job there)"

That's far, far from "most people". Landlords, for instance, would benefit, due to being able to charge higher rents. But everyone else in that town that rents would not benefit. And I dare say there are more renters than there are landlords.

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Re:Why Don’t the 20 Cities on Amazon's HQ2 Shortlist Collect... by conanbatt on Tuesday January 23, 2018 @04:34PM (#16217931)

http://www.businessinsider.com/homeownership-rate-state-map-...

Most people are landlords..

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Re:Why Don’t the 20 Cities on Amazon's HQ2 Shortlist Collect... by s73ver_ on Tuesday January 23, 2018 @11:11PM (#16220243)

That is not at all what that says. Someone who owns their house is not a landlord. A landlord is someone who rents out a property to someone else.

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