[tbirrell]

As someone who will probably never work at Amazon, or in any way benefit from their presence, the issues of housing prices and infrastructure are important to me. I'm not willing to pay an effective Amazon-tax in both my rent and commute time for for the dubious honor of saying I live in the same city as HQ2.

[TheCowboy]

I'm not a fan of cities dishing out perks, but what you said amounts to NIMBYism. I'm sympathetic to those concerns but housing prices aren't solved by keeping out newcomers or being against development. There can also be an indirect income boost that comes with an increased demand for labor, and it can help make the local economy more robust.

I do think the concern about unforeseen infrastructure costs are warranted, especially if a city doesn't excel in urban planning or has problems with NIMBYism derailing good plans. But I think most of the cities on the shortlist are fair game and could handle a project of this scale.

[dragonwriter]

> housing prices aren't solved by keeping out newcomers or being against development.

Housing prices aren't solved by forcing homeowners to subsidize commercial development, either. Ml

[apercu]

What is the problem with NYMBYism? Why is that a bad word?

Because a bunch of jerks in SV won't let more housing go in?

[ghaff]

Because it's a cheap, lazy insult to throw out at people who have different preferences than you do. It originally applied more to things like power plants that we collectively need but that basically no one wants to live next to. But there's absolutely nothing wrong with a city not wanting an Amazon HQ because of its impact on current residents when plenty of other places do.

[apercu]

> Because it's a cheap, lazy insult to throw out at people who have different preferences than you do.

Agreed.

[nerfhammer]

Because there are tremendous social costs to intentionally causing housing shortages.

https://www.axios.com/the-great-stagnation-americans-stopped...

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/04/business/how-anti-growth-...

[apercu]

Right, but we're not talking about housing, we're talking about Amazon.

[melq]

Well, no, you're talking about NIMBYism.

But bringing in Amazon is going to necessitate adding housing stock, and that just doesn't happen in like Boston that already have housing issues and rampant NIMBYism.

[tbirrell]

That fair. However, Austin is already behind the curve and can't keep up with the current influx of people and companies, adding Amazon to the mix will simply exacerbate the problem. Thus my concern. Maybe it'll be a good thing 10 years down the road, but that'll be a tough 10 years and I'm not confident that Austin will even be able to get to that point.

[skt5]

> "in any way benefit from their presence"

how did you reach that conclusion?

[zhjansbnas]

The whole point of cities is economic agglomeration. If you don’t want that, why live in a city at all?

[tbirrell]

Economic agglomeration is not bad, but if the city is unable to keep up with said agglomerating, then accelerating it is a bad idea. Austin is already behind the curve and can't keep up with the current influx of people and companies, adding Amazon to the mix will simply exacerbate the problem.

[conanbatt]

Its reasonable that if you are individually not profiting from it, you should vote against, but most people will benefit (every single landlord, lots of businesses that will sell stuff, and all the people that would move and get a job there). If it were to be put up to a vote, the vote would be positive. If it were to be put up for an economic analysis, the economic analysis would be positive.

[s73ver_]

"but most people will benefit (every single landlord, lots of businesses that will sell stuff, and all the people that would move and get a job there)"

That's far, far from "most people". Landlords, for instance, would benefit, due to being able to charge higher rents. But everyone else in that town that rents would not benefit. And I dare say there are more renters than there are landlords.

[conanbatt]

http://www.businessinsider.com/homeownership-rate-state-map-...

Most people are landlords..

[s73ver_]

That is not at all what that says. Someone who owns their house is not a landlord. A landlord is someone who rents out a property to someone else.