This is potentially wasted money, but it did not go to Foxconn, and presumably created infrastructure jobs. Not defending the deal, but it is often mischaracterized. The benefits to the companies usually are tax rebates that are only valuable if the company makes real investments that are taxable. They are not direct payments.

> and presumably created infrastructure jobs

Usually you hear people complain about dig-a-hole-then-fill-it-up jobs. But if we're going to start supporting those, it would be best not to tie them to scams, I think.

Yeah. Sounds a lot like the dig-up-all-the-carbon-burn-then-bury-it-again civilizational project going on the past 100, and next 100 years.

What exactly was the purpose to "re-arranging small bits of matter near the surface of the earth" again? [1]

Basically I wanted to make a comment about greedy exploitation-exploration trade-off strategies here but will stop short at this kind of eliptical passing remark.

[1] paraphrasing Russell in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Praise_of_Idleness_and_Othe... it is appropriate given current moment

From the same man that proposed the idea of "re-arranging small bits of matter near the surface of the earth".

>It would, indeed, be more sensible to build houses and the like; but if there are political and practical difficulties in the way of this, the above would be better than nothing.

It's a social hack to get around idiotic situations. It's like moving to mars because you are worried about a nuclear war or climate change. Dumb games require dumb players.

If Foxconn tricked a local government into providing free "useful" infrastructure it could just rent that "useful" infrastructure out to a different company and thus capture the entire tax benefit. However, they didn't even do that... The money was fully wasted.

On top of everything else, abuses of eminent-domain, civil forfeiture, and so forth really, really bother me.

In principle, I unconditionally support the right of the polis (the government) to do what needs to be done. My own city basically used extralegal means to wrestle numerous blighted, condemned properties away from a trust. The creators of the trust were dead and no one was left to negotiate.

But hot damn these levers of power get abused.

Please recommend any books, articles, etc advocating reforms.

Ilya Somin is a law professor who writes a lot on ED-reform.

As far as action, the Institute for Justice looks for cases they think they can make with, and lobby for legal reform.

https://ij.org/issues/private-property/eminent-domain/

You'll find they both come at things from a libertarian direction, but neither are rabid.

That said, yeah, I also have to be honest. We're down about 1 billion dollars on that Foxconn thing. That's what we're out of pocket. The new governor, wisely, took what remained of our chips and left that table. You get mad, but you just have to chalk it up to a learning experience.

The Illinois people are right on this one by the way. Not even in Illinois would their leaders get away with a 5.5 billion dollar con. The people in Illinois are so used to dealing with corruption that they would have started asking questions and raising a fuss long before it got to that point. Our problem is that we're so accustomed to our corruption that we never raised a fuss until it was way too late.

All that said, in Wisconsin our leaders didn't get away with 5.5 billion dollar con either technically speaking. Scott Walker and his boys got us for about a billion, but they didn't get as much as they wanted. So fibs shouldn't gloat too much, because while I can't see anyone in Illinois getting away with a 5.5 billion dollar pure con, I could see someone getting away with maybe a billion. (It's just that they're far more wealthy than we are, so that billion doesn't hurt as much.)

Everyone knew from the start this was a BS deal and never going to happen or make ANY sense. This was pure incompetence at a political level that was paid for by tax payers.