A couple of interesting things are happening with the massive companies that rule our online lives. First, the lords of Silicon Valley face political headwinds. There is tech-company skepticism on the populist right, the anti-corporate left and the good-government center. There is talk of trustbusting and utility-style regulation from Steve Bannon as well as Bernie Sanders. There is a palpable feeling, as Ben Smith of Buzzfeed wrote last week, that the online giants’ “golden age” of political immunity is ending, and that it might be “normal politics, normal regulation” from here on out.
Second, one of these giants — Amazon — is in the market for a second headquarters, where it intends to park some 50,000 employees and an awful lot of tech-industry dollars over the years and decades ahead.
The Amazon hunt has inspired data whizzes to argue about which American metropolis best fits the company’s demanding specifications. This newspaper’s The Upshot, for instance, used indicators like job growth, an educated labor pool, quality of life and ease of transportation to winnow the list to Portland, Ore.; Denver; Boston; and D.C. — and then gave the edge to Denver for its space and lower cost of living.
The company will probably ultimately make a choice along these lines. But the political backdrop, the growing suspicion on right and left about whether big tech serves the common good, raises an interesting question: What if Amazon treated their headquartering decision as an act of corporate citizenship, part public relations stunt and part genuinely patriotic gesture? What if it approached the decision as an opportunity to push back against trends driving populist suspicion of big business — educational and geographic polarization, coastal growth and heartland decay, the sense that the New Economy creates wealth but not jobs and that its tycoons are loyal to globalization rather than their country?
Amazon can’t realistically spread its offices and jobs across America’s most isolated and despairing counties. But instead of picking an obvious BosWash hub or creative-class boomtown, it could opt to plant itself in a medium-sized city in a conservative state — think Nashville or Indianapolis or Birmingham. Or it could look for a struggling East Coast alternative to the obvious Acelaland options — not Boston but Hartford, not D.C. but Baltimore, not New York but Bridgeport. Or it could pick a big, battered, declining city and offer its presence as an engine of revitalization, building Amazon Cleveland or Amazon Detroit.
A particularly compelling pick, according to my extremely nonscientific “what’s good for America” metric, might be St. Louis — a once-great metropolis fallen on hard times, the major urban center for a large spread of Trump country, the geographic center of the country and the historic bridge between East and West.
Of course, Amazon also needs its choice for a new headquarters to make financial sense. The company is not a charity, and making itself the prisoner of a disastrous investment won’t ultimately help anyone except its rivals.
But it’s hard to know with any real certainty what the best long-term geographic investment for the company would be. The fact that tech companies tend to cluster doesn’t mean that a uniquely rich and powerful company couldn’t benefit from having a city of its own. The fact that bright young singletons gravitate toward coastal urbs right now doesn’t mean that you couldn’t attract talent — especially married-with-kids talent — to a heartland city whose Amazon District took advantage of sprawling housing stock left over from a prosperous past. Depending on which elements on Amazon’s wish list you weight most heavily, you can make a great variety of cities score impressively — from Bridgeport to Provo, Utah; Detroit to Rochester, N.Y.
Ultimately, as Lyman Stone, a prolific Department of Agriculture cotton economist, points out in a piece on Amazon’s decision, there is no city that comes close to meeting all of the company’s requirements: “No matter where Amazon goes, they will have to build their own fundamentals.” And no matter where the company goes, what it builds will change that city radically — so a static analysis of any destination will only take you so far.
If Donald Trump were the deal making, industrial-policy president that he once promised to be, he would be on the phone with Jeff Bezos right now, making a case along these very lines — while hinting, broadly and of course nonthreateningly (har, har), at the political benefits of opening Amazon St. Louis or Amazon Detroit, of being seen as a company that renews cities and doesn’t just put brick and mortar out of business.
I don’t have a strong view — yet — on whether we should treat internet giants like utilities. But when you enjoy a monopoly’s powers, one way to avoid being regulated like one is to act with a kind pre-emptive patriotism, and behave as though what’s good for America is good for Amazon as well.
<
ROSS DOUTHAT>
댓글 안에 당신의 성숙함도 담아 주세요.
'오늘의 한마디'는 기사에 대하여 자신의 생각을 말하고 남의 생각을 들으며 서로 다양한 의견을 나누는 공간입니다. 그러나 간혹 불건전한 내용을 올리시는 분들이 계셔서 건전한 인터넷문화 정착을 위해 아래와 같은 운영원칙을 적용합니다.
자체 모니터링을 통해 아래에 해당하는 내용이 포함된 댓글이 발견되면 예고없이 삭제 조치를 하겠습니다.
불건전한 댓글을 올리거나, 이름에 비속어 및 상대방의 불쾌감을 주는 단어를 사용, 유명인 또는 특정 일반인을 사칭하는 경우 이용에 대한 차단 제재를 받을 수 있습니다. 차단될 경우, 일주일간 댓글을 달수 없게 됩니다.
명예훼손, 개인정보 유출, 욕설 등 법률에 위반되는 댓글은 관계 법령에 의거 민형사상 처벌을 받을 수 있으니 이용에 주의를 부탁드립니다.
Close
x