the obvious answer to this here is that no, they expected people would notice. but they made the call that there wouldn't be any consequences. and they were probably correct.
In full hindsight, the sheer efficiency of the HQ2 gambit is striking.
It was obvious from the beginning that framing it as a "competition" between a short list of cities was a ploy to make gullible politicians bid against one another while Amazon waited to see who could offer the most enticing deal.
What is perhaps less obvious is that now everyone who participated has shown their hand: Amazon knows exactly what concessions each city can afford. With their HQ2s "selected", Amazon can now offer far less glamorous satellite offices or warehouses to those cities and drive a murderously hard bargain doing so.
In one fell swoop: a free media circus, leverage on every location they might want to move into in the future, and heaps of public funds, in exchange for opening the offices Bezos already knew he wanted.
Why would you ever enter a negotiation if you don't know what you want ? You're most likely to injure yourself. So sure, Bezos' didn't make mistake #1 people make in negotiations. Google "bafta", "negotiation maximum pain", and start there for what you need to know before you buy as much as a loaf of bread. And yes, I have in fact managed to negotiate down the price of bread in a Supermarket. I would suggest you try too, just to show yourself that it's possible.
Amazon only grew because of the interstate commerce Sales tax exception. Essentially Amazon grew only because states couldn't tax it. Only the Federal government got money from them. Amazon is a creation of the Federal government (using a rule, ironically, Democrats and even Bernie Sanders voted FOR, not against. The Federal government really wanted to create an Amazon like company, and so they provided this advantage, and Bezos crushed it. That's what happened. Amazon is not a bookstore, it isn't even a store or warehouse or technology firm, it's a effectively a government hedge fund)
Look at Bezos' background. Is he a librarian ? A book seller ? He's a wall street investor (started as an engineer actually, but he was working quite the time as a speculator by the time he founded Amazon). He's a financial engineer, would perhaps be the best description. He will innovate, but he realizes that his innovations are about taxes, prices, trading and moving opportunities around. They're very much not about products, books, hosting, ... or any of that.
So last year the Federal govenrnment took away his tax advantage over his competitors (at least Walmart). So you can bet your bottom dollar that 12 out of every 24 waking hours of Bezos' time were spent figuring out how to get that back. This seems to have been one answer (I seriously doubt he has only one trick going).
Ends up Blaze was just playing the field to extract resources, and use the grift to extract every penny from the studio he knew he would ultimately pick? We’d assume that Blaze lacks character.
Huh? Since when is initiating a bidding war immoral or lacking in character?
A party might come up with an attractive offer you never considered or thought possible. And even if you knew you wouldn't take their offers, it is rational and logical to get the best deal you can with something that is expensive and one-off like this.
When all of your profits come at the expense of the local residents who don't get a vote on the matter, I think it's a lot stronger case for immorality. A moral business has limits at which it drives for profit. I'm not sure where I stand on it myself, but the bidding war itself is not the moral problem, it's the context of the bidding war. I certainly don't view Amazon positively for doing it. At its core, this is Amazon profiting at the cost of American citizens. If every corporation did this, America would take quite a big hit. I would love to see the practice of making such a bidding war become illegal.
"who don't get a vote on the matter" -> They elected the representatives that they trust to make these decisions; that's representational democracy, the cornerstone of most of the world's countries.
To change it, you as a citizen need to demand better of your politicians.
Amazon's not the problem; they're just doing what's best for their shareholders, which is the whole point of a corporation. It's the government that needs to be held accountable for this situation; they're the ones going along with the bidding war - your suggestion of such a bidding war being made illegal is definitely a start.
In today's America, demanding politicians only goes so far and I would say its one of many broken parts of our system. You can say that I "as a citizen" should do X but the reality is that citizens have lost control of their government and have for some time now. I personally believe that representational democracy is very flawed and would love to see a return to more direct democracy.
Amazon isn't the source of the problem but a company that exploits the problems of others for their gain is not a not moral company in my book. And of course there is a spectrum here as it's impossible for law to match morals, but for a company in such a large and good position to do this without need is a notable action from a moral perspective. So no, Amazon is not the problem, but given that no one has really quite done this at this scale, they basically created the problem in the first place and Amazon deserves scrutiny and blame for that 100%.
Petitioning local governments for incentives to build factories/business related enterprises has been around for a while. Pretty much every major sports team ownership group goes for subsidized stadium construction.
And all of those processes have been widely criticized for being bad deals that hurt taxpayers. Just because Amazon is playing a long-established game doesn't mean that game isn't crooked, and that they shouldn't be criticized for indulging in such a farce, especially when they have the wealth and resources to do otherwise.
When it isn't a bidding war. Before it began you selected your winner. You then conned the other players to participate, thinking they had a chance, just so you can get a better deal. All those others spent tax payer money to enjoy win, but had no chance.
A pro athlete has an idea of where he wants to sign when he becomes a free agent. He visits various teams, lets them wine and dine him, lets them engage in bidding for his contract.
Do a google search for “articles predicting DC and nyc would win amazon” and you’ll get results going back at least to September 2017. Folks had NYC and DC at least in the final four, if not outright winners. A sample:
I think you are missing the point. Those 50k jobs were going to en up in NYC and DC no matter what. The “competition” was used to get those two metro areas to offer buckets of money to a company that does not need said dollars. That money could have been put to much better use.
And that would have been fine. NY could get much more bang for their buck then giving it to Amazon by — for example — investing it in the subway system.
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