I agree, but I also think many places compete poorly.
I recently moved to a fast-growing (read: developer-friendly) region of the USA that often claims to be a "top place to live". And I might just leave, for many reasons:
* The water tastes terrible. But I bought a filter so whatever...
* The schools are bad. But I can try to lottery into the magnet school, okay..
* The services suck because they are not made to keep up with demand. Worse yet this is "normalized", seen as completely okay by the culture.
* Can't make a DMV appointment yet, next appointments available in three months
* None of the post offices accessible to me have passport appointments available. The only walk in service available is in another county
* I can't drive, transit exists but is too infrequent to be a good option to get to that other county for a very specific appointment
That's just a small slice of government-enabled things which happen to affect me. But what of it? No one in power gives a shit. So f--k me for having high expectations, I guess.
The theory is that for a whole range of lucrative jobs, “everywhere with Internet” can offer residents those jobs through remote work. So a neighborhood doesn’t need to compete to attract a big office building.
Personally I think that remains to be seen… we’re clearly still in the hangover from the pandemic. Society might look very different 10 years from now, and 10 years is a reasonable horizon for major civic planning. Most of the things that attracted Amazon to Crystal City were put in years or decades prior to their little competition.
> A business that doesn’t employ anyone or consume any inputs from other state businesses is not going to be a particularly interesting business to incentivize.
Exactly, that’s the whole point of the piece. If all the most lucrative jobs for your residents are remote, then maybe your civic planning will need to revolve around attracting people rather than incentivizing businesses.
Again, remains to be seen IMO. One big downside, from the perspective of local governments, is that taxes on individuals will have to go up. Quite a lot of local tax revenue passes through businesses, hidden in prices. You can’t hide on a W2 or property tax bill though.
Case in point, Honolulu has a cost of living on par with (or exceeding) New York, SF, etc, but with wages on par with an average mid sized midwestern city.
What this means is people who were born and raised on the island either live with parents or move to the mainland