The locations were pre-selected, and Amazon was just testing the waters to know how much free corporate welfare various government institutions were willing to give the 18th largest company in America.
The comment above seems to be speculation that backroom deals played a part in a major tech news story. Speculation based on expert opinion often seems welcome, but speculation colored by negative experiences with the political jockeying that tech firms often do to accomplish their goals is not welcome.
Suppose the user above is a tech CEO with expert experience negotiating land deals with city government. Suppose they're a clerk in city government who often are privy to these deals. I feel like you may be making some broad assumptions of your own about what rises to the level of expert opinion and that's got a noxious effect on conversation here as well.
I'm assuming that by "the locations were pre-selected" the comment means that the outcome of the process was predetermined. That's a huge claim. Obviously a comment making a wild accusation without providing any basis for it is unsubstantive. It lowers discussion quality noticeably when people sling such charges around. I realize it's a fun thing to do on the internet, but there are other places for it.
I've noticed lots of instances where a high profile technology company may be responsible for some wrongdoing gets the notice of moderators.
It leads me to believe this particular kind of speculation presents a specific problem for hacker news and the moderators.
I don't much care, either way, about Amazon or any other high-profile technology company. I care about doing a good job for HN. Assuming I didn't misread the GP comment, it seems like an obvious case of somebody making something inflammatory up on the internet, so I posted a moderation reply. This is routine. Yes, there are plenty of other cases just as bad where we don't reply. That doesn't mean we secretly agree with those comments. Most often it means we didn't see them.
This did not seem to be a throwaway comment to me. It seems entirely plausible that a backroom deal was reached between local politicians and Amazon. Such deals were solicited and a major part of the reporting around this story.
Worst moderator I've ever seen. Seriously, you are just atrocious.
> All told, Virginia offered Amazon only $550 million in tax breaks and $195 million in transportation improvements. But it pledged to plow $1.1 billion into tech schooling. According to Moret, it was the only place in the nation that made education the centerpiece of its pitch.
More than 2/3's of Virginia's investment into Amazon was in education and transit, which benefits everyone.
Philly, by contrast, offered $4.6 billion in subsidies, just $100 million for transit, and nothing for education: https://slate.com/technology/2018/11/amazon-hq2-incredible-i.... Chicago offered $1.3 billion in tax breaks and $450 million for transit.
"We're moving to Virginia. Let's see if we can get other cities to bid and see if that improves Virginia's offered incentives."
(Plus free business intelligence hand delivered to them, and leverage if they want to put a distribution hub in one of the cities that didn't win. "You were willing to part with billions, you can't spare a couple dozen million in incentives for this warehouse?")
Worst case you're at the cost you expected anyways.
Or perhaps you'd like to explain how Amazon wants tech schooling for, I dunno, religious reasons?
Ostensibly, yes, but caution is warranted here; let's hope that (as with Oracle sponsorship), that education funding doesn't translate into indoctrination into the sponsor's stack.
More telling is that these tax incentives all seem off-the-shelf. Like these cities are crazy inflating the sticker price of their taxes just so they can turn around and boast to businesses about how much they are taking off. Like a cheap salesman.
They are. Tax incentives are a common practice. Amazon just made it national news.