No one thinks of themselves as "country-simple". They certainly don't throw hope for their community out the window because they're too "country-simple" to understand that it's a lie.
Sometimes you have to have the self-awareness to ask yourself, here I am, an educated tech enthusiast, who's being presented with a decision and self-delusion I can't empathize with. Is it likely that my narrow experience can be applied in judgment of all other people? Or maybe I have never known the desperation of living in a dying region?
I'll bite.
The first thing I would do in a desperate situation in a position of power in a dying region is be radically open to feedback and transparent with my own ideas.
A desperate situation is no room for ego or selfishness.
You involve the community, and you try to listen to everyone, and if an opportunity presents itself that is above your paygrade you try to hope that the COLLECTIVE wisdom of multiple people with different strengths might somehow help offset your power imbalance.
Now, listen to the podcast that interviews this inexperienced elected official and ask yourself if he did anything of the sort, or if he just saw an opportunity to enrich and embiggen himself: https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/wbhjwd
I'm glad that people like you exist, but it is extremely rare that they are elected or stay in office.
It's common for intellectual humility to be perceived as incompetence or weak leadership. "I don't know what to do, but I'm open to hearing your ideas!" is not confidence-inspiring. Admitting to mistakes can be the same.
> You involve the community, and you try to listen to everyone
Similar to the above, this can be seen as weakness. Look at the criticism of Jack Dorsey and Twitter. People mock him for this behavior instead of making unilateral decisions with incomplete evidence.
> if an opportunity presents itself that is above your paygrade
Again, not something a normal human in a leadership position often thinks. You don't think to yourself, "Wow, I'm just not smart enough to understand a large company promising something." Especially in the US, where people trust the legal system to force the other party to make good on its promises.
> he just saw an opportunity to enrich and embiggen himself
I agree that he did this. He wasn't the only person who saw this opportunity. It's also how democracy is supposed to work: someone wins a popularity contest and then wants to win it again.
The incentives this creates are sometimes perverse. You do stupid things that sound good just because they sound good. Can you imagine being an official brave enough to say they don't think Foxconn would follow through? No one would want to vote for you.
We've seen this repeatedly with Trump: he promises impossible things like the return of the coal industry and manufacturing jobs. Some of his rivals in the Republican Party did not promise this, and they were nowhere near as popular as him.
I think this is a failing of our constantly-broadcasting news cycle and incorrect belief about what leaders should be. Yes, leaders should help their people be confident. But we also need to stop putting expectations on leaders that they know the answer at every minute or communication. Otherwise we incentivize them to put out incorrect information or decisions for fear of being seen as weak.
I also have a feeling that our instant "like" culture, mass mobilization of (generally uninformed) public opinion, and belief that democracy to the lowest level is not the right way to manage situations that require contemplative expertise and specialized knowledge.
Of course not. But this is a story of a small town government negotiating with a multibillion-dollar company. They kept negotiations secret. They didn’t seem to hire best-in-class bankers nor lawyers.
I understand the desperation. But stupid doesn’t become less stupid because it was dumb for the right reasons. Best case, they deluded themselves into believing they found a golden goose. That’s incompetent.
I think you misunderstood my post.
I wasn't saying that what they did wasn't stupid. It was. The post I was replying to implied the following in a condescending way:
1) the poster is not "simple" enough to be conned by a massive corporation
2) all people living in rural areas are "simple"
3) all people living in rural areas should know that they are simple and never aspire to anything that we big-city people do because it is beyond their cognitive abilities
4) doing something that will probably fail (trusting Foxconn, in this case) is never a rational decision
Regarding #4, it's easy to say that Foxconn is 100% untrustworthy, but we all know that mostly in hindsight. Even if they had a 1% chance of coming through, a region with a dying economy might actually be rational to throw away an enormous amount of money. If it's their only hope, it would be rational to throw away all of their money.
Countermeasures to this stereotype can be equally damaging. It may have played into Foxconn’s advantage here.
“We don’t need an expensive coastal banker telling us what to do” is reasonable if everyone is out to screw small timers.
> a region with a dying economy might actually be rational to throw away an enormous amount of money
This wasn’t money they had. It was taxpayers’ future money. Money that could have financed education or infrastructure or a move to another city. This mindset is only rational if staying in place has infinite utility, not only for the region’s present residents, but its future ones too.
* Mount Pleasant WI is not rural (city-data.com says 95% urban). It lies on I94 just 1hr 15min from Chicago and 30min from Milwaukee. * I doubt Mount Pleasant WI is dying.
If I remember, the deal was pretty opaque and many details were murky. I find it more likely the local officials were incentivized somehow as opposed to sheer incompetence.
Additionally, it should be noted that the WI governor (Scott Walker) who orchestrated this deal lost his re-election bid shortly after this. While there was always uncertainty about Foxconn actually following through, the lack of Walker (and thus probably Trump) basically sealed the deal.
I think you're right. I was responding to someone saying they are "country" people.
> I doubt Mount Pleasant WI is dying.
Milwaukee's metro area (which includes Mount Pleasant and Racine, the places most closely tied to Foxconn's scam) has seen a massive decline in manufacturing:
> "The Great Recession hit Milwaukee’s manufacturing industry especially hard, and the city continues to have discomfiting employment statistics..."[1].
Broad economic numbers aren't great for Racine County as far as I can tell. They're worse than the US overall. Even if they were great, we know from examples across the US that declining blue-collar jobs may be especially painful for the non-urban electorate -- people who influence the local officials who believe the wishful nonsense Foxconn peddles.
> "'This area desperately needs the investment. There's nothing here anymore,' said Tom Johnston, a 54-year-old veteran of [Racine's] once-vaunted manufacturing sector."[2]
1. https://www.badgerinstitute.org/Reports/2013/A-Fresh-Take-on...
2. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/as-the-economy-teete...
It's basically in the same metro area as Chicago. Would you say Chicago's dying? It may have declined (or not grown as fast as other US cities) lately but "dying" seems like hyperbole, no?
Even if they had, is it likely that those people would have told them it wasn't a good deal? My sense is that everyone on the inside thought this was a sweetheart of a deal and were already counting their eggs. And if recent history is any guide, that group of people might very well be the least concerned about whether truth was being conveyed, or care to look deeper into the matter than their own pocketbooks.
Though the smaller towns in the state are more dependant on lower yield industries.
I remember Brazil built huge stadiums for the World Cup and Olympics banking on their local teams moving into them, which wound up not happening because the teams didn’t like the lease terms. A $900M stadium became a bus garage[1]
0: https://www.theguardian.com/sport/gallery/2014/aug/13/abando...
1: https://www.popularmechanics.com/adventure/sports/a15531/bra...
I mean, they actually hold an Olympics. It's not clear to me that anything meaningful will happen out in Mt Pleasant Wi. Not even anything worth the 1 billion we've already spent, and that's forgetting about what we're on the hook for if something does happen. It's put a lot of us in wisconsin in the awkward position of hoping everything there completely fails, so we can get out with just the losses we've already taken.
A year after the $51 billion Winter Olympics, many of the key facilities built for Vladimir Putin's extravaganza have been barely been used.
While the pistes up the mountains are now often packed with skiers - the collapsing rouble means Russians have switched from the likes of Courchevel to the Caucasus - many of the key sites of the games appear to have little prospect of being filled again.
He complained that the Bolshoy Ice Dome - costing the Russian taxpayer £197 million - requires a budget of £9,900 a day to maintain, 'mainly for taking care of the ice'.
A company which owns some of the key facilities - hardly used since the games - and is close to the regional authorities, is on the very edge of bankruptcy, he reported, citing Russia's leading business newspaper Kommersant.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2941216/Extraordina...
Sochi went from being a dump to being a somewhat popular vacation destination for middle class people.
There's room for argument on whether federal funds should have been used to make Sochi richer and nicer, but the article as written is basically fake news.
Or quite literally any banker or lawyer who has negotiated such deals before.
The person on the company’s side has done this dozens of times. The person negotiating for the city has not. At some point, that asymmetry should become apparent.
I wouldn’t pay a cent. Foxconn isn’t delivering on its promise. Put the money towards something that will matter. UW funding cuts should be reversed. Build some infrastructure (e.g. fiber, bike trails, high speed rail, solar and wind) and get Wisconsin moving forward.
For example, the fire chief ran an anonymous blog commenting on city council happenings (exposed years later when his WordPress install errored and exposed his username). For years he anonymously accused a citizen who opposed the Foxconn project of sleeping with opposition friendly city council members, and then variously:
mentally ill, hypocrite, dingbat, loser, village bully, liar, vile, a joke, an embarrassment, illiterate, a dope, a pimp, deceitful, evil, smelly, hateful, revengeful, crazy, nut job, embarrassing, profane, psycho, stupid, lowlife, vengeful, immoral, racist, witch, snake lady, freakshow, bitter, dumb, and much, much more
If you truly believe what you're doing is good for your community, you don't typically shroud the entire process in secrecy, suppress dissent, and only make a public announcement once the deal is practically set in stone.
Sometimes you have to have the self-awareness to ask yourself, here I am, a country-simple and inexperienced elected official, who's being presented with a huge fantasy of a deal (well beyond my order of magnitude experience), and being asked to keep this secret from the press and constituents.
Is it likely that I'm such a good negotiator and master of finances and state incentives and my town is so special, that the huge company I'm dealing with (with dozens of analysts) is asking me to keep it secret because they're afraid of how they're getting screwed? Or maybe the other way around?
Those town council members and mayor got taken for the ride of their lives by their gullibility and desire for national politicians to chalk up a headline, which of course, never materialized.
Edit: oh, I see someone has just posted the Reply- all podcast link to that story, thanks!