Blog Credo

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

H.L. Mencken

Tuesday, November 13, 2018

This Is A Problem

Look, there are more important things right now, but Amazon's decision to put its new headquarters in Washington and New York is a problem.

Amazon is effectively unrestrained from normal business considerations because of it's great size and near monopoly over the online retail market.  That's a separate issue.  The real issue is how geography is killing the post-modern economy.

The primary political chasm today is urban versus rural.  Cities are overwhelmingly diverse, forward looking and open.  Rural areas are homogenous, traditional and insular.  But even within the urban sample, there are winners and losers.  NY, LA, Chicago, San Francsico, Washington, Atlanta, Charlotte, Miami, Denver...there's a long list of cities who are facing the 21st century and liking what they see (for the most part).

There are other cities that are decaying: Detroit, Cleveland, Baltimore...let's stop there.

Why wouldn't Amazon choose Baltimore over DC?  Hell, even south of Baltimore?  BWI airport is right there, you have franchises in the NFL and MLB, and the NHL and NBA are just down in DC.  What's more, real estate is cheaper.  The DC area is one of the most expensive in the country - as is NYC.  If Amazon had moved to Detroit, they'd have the run of the place.  Same with Kansas City or Memphis.

We talk a lot about how divided America is along red and blue lines, but those lines are not sectional, they are regional.  Amazon just made that worse.

UPDATE:  Ocasio-Cortez makes some good points.

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