Bezos the First

So did you, or your local city and/or town officials put in your bid to be the home of Amazon's second headquarters? Because if you didn't, you've let your city down as the deadline was last Thursday. Shame on you.

You can probably expect some sort of revolt when the
simple townsfolk learn what you did...or rather didn't do.

You know, the city of Tuscan probably
could've had free shipping if it'd just
ponied up for a Prime subscription.

But in your defense, the odds are fairly slim of your town getting picked. The company announced today that it's received 238 proposals from cities in the U.S. Canada and Mexico. That's a lot of competition. Especially when you consider the perks on offer. Sure, tax breaks, financial incentives, those are to be expected, but some restaurant in Pittsburg is offering free sandwiches for Amazon employees, and Tuscan Arizona tried to give the company a 21-foot tall cactus because what online retailer doesn't want on of those?

According to the company, getting picked will mean 50,000 new jobs and billions of dollars being pumped into the local economy which is super and almost certainly makes up for the way the company's business model is slowly destroying everything.

Above: an example of the 50,000 low-paying, soul-crushing jobs that
may be coming to your city soon! At least until an algorithm determines that
 humans are obsolete and workers are replaced with more efficient drones. 

"Say, that's a capital idea!
Bully for you Mayor Lary!"

-Some robber barron

But perhaps the most degrading offer comes from Mayor of Stonecrest Georgia who is offering to hand over a few hundred acres of Stonecrest, Georgia to Amazon. The proposed city would be called Amazon and the Mayor suggested that Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos run it himself. Interestingly, Stonecrest, which is in DeKalb county near Atlanta, has only been a town for about five months. It was incorporated thanks to the efforts of Jason Lary who is now the Mayor. Look, I've never founded a city, but am I being a jerk if I say it's kind of weird that Mayor Lary's been running the city he helped create for less than a year and is already offering to slice off a chunk of it and sell it?

Pfft...bet Mayor Lary never had
to worry about Bowser attacks...

Probably. Look, I'm terrible at SimCity but even I know selling out to a for-profit corporation is almost certainly going to come back and bit them in the ass someday. I mean, holy shit, company towns didn't exactly work out well last time we tried them.

"Jeff Bezos can be the mayor, CEO, king, whatever they want to call it. He'll be the first person to actually have a corporate city."

-Jason Lary, apparently never 

having heard of George Pullman

Ok, couple of things. No, Jeff Bezos can't be king. We fought a whole war about that. Also, and this is admittedly a quibble, can a company have two headquarters? I mean, by definition a headquarters is the 'head' or principal quarters. So right away this is starting to sound like Jeff Bezos is just trying to scam free sandwiches and corporate fiefdoms out of gullible Mayors.

"I'll be great. Amazon employees could live in company housing, shop at the company store
-hey, they wouldn't even need to be paid in real money, just company scrip! He can call'em BezoBucks!"

-Jason Lary, soon-to-be former Mayor