captainDave
redblack: You can’t constitutionally just seize property from Amazon without compensation (Although the City of Seattle does that sort of thing to small businesses all the time). Socialist city councilmember Sawant was proposing to seize the entire company and turn it into a state-run institution. The problem with this sort of soviet style activity is that it has a massive chilling effect on business and private sector jobs. Nobody will want to come here and risk having heir investment taken away by the government.
It is far better to not let any single company dominant the market in the first place by making sure there is plenty of other businesses. The easiest way to prevent market domination is to provide a welcoming business-friendly environment where there is lots of competition. San Francisco, for instance, has lots of big and small companies that developed over the years. They are not so friendly anymore but have amassed a lot more diverse economic momentum than Seattle.
The reason why I say that Seattle is structurally in bad shape right now is that its like Detroit was in the late nineteen-fifties. During that time, Detroit was considered by many to be the premiere city in the world in economic terms–it was top of the list for high paying jobs, full employment, investment opportunities and lifestyle. However, the entire city was dependent on just a few giant companies that fed everything. Like a house of cards, Detroit eventually collapsed. Amazon is really nothing more than a big low-margin retailer like Sears was in the early part of the last century. When (not if) Amazon falters, Seattle will feel major pain. Because of the anti-small-business environment in Seattle, there is not much of an economic base that is growing new independent businesses to take up the slack when Amazon either moves or scales back their high rate of growth.
If you take Amazon and all the dependent enterprises out of the current economic picture of Seattle, the city would look much like the rest of the state. The GDP we are enjoying is coming from a reduction in other distribution systems as brick and mortar is replaced by online retail. That won’t last forever.
The key to fixing our situation before it goes south is to make Seattle small-business friendly again by reducing regulatory barriers and improving regional mobility.