Attribute to L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise

All that the left knows how to do is steal and kill and wreck what they’re incapable of building or even understanding.

In the latest instance, Amazon.com, that great cornucopian Sears-Roebuck of the twenty-first century, which was going to establish a new corporate headquarters, choosing Long Island City, New York from among more than two hundred competitors, has finally decided to go somewhere else, instead, due to the open hostility—not of the voters, who approved the deal by more than 70 percent—but of local “progressive” politicians on the make, and noisy leftist scum demonstrating in the streets (lunch is probably on George Soros).

Meanwhile, the poster-girl for economic and political idiocy, Anastasia Ocasio-Cortez—the same bouncy cretinette who wants to outlaw nasty old sooty airplanes and make everybody ride trains, instead—has hailed the tragic loss as a victory “for the people”, a warning to all of us about atrocities to come if we let this destructive little gremlin get any further up the political totem pole. The one thing she knows: you can’t make an omelet without breaking heads.

What happened is that Amazon was promised relief from taxes—about three billion dollars’ worth—if they would move to New York. I know that libertarians generally oppose “corporate welfare” but my understanding is that no actual money was actually changing hands here. I have no great fondness or sympathy for Amazon—they could have been so much greater than the toxic social justice warriors (but I repeat myself) among them have let them become—but I find it very hard to condemn financially dying communities for trying to resist the economic slide to the bottom of Western Civilization induced by the suicidal schemes of socialist politicians like the Cuomo crime family.

Proto-communists like Ocasio-Cortez, who regard every cent in your pockets as their own, wanted to flush all that money—which doesn’t actually exist, yet—down the welfare state oubliette (a dead loss) and made the typically whiny collectivist “argument” that tax relief shouldn’t be granted to such an obscenely rich company. Ayn Rand would open her nostrils in AOC’s general direction. How much wealth the company may or may not possess is completely irrelevant. As the great libertarian philosopher Robert LeFevre (look him up) taught me to ask in 1972, “What is it that you really want?” Do you want Amazon’s headquarters in your city, providing a reported twenty-five thousand jobs? Or do you prefer more grimy East German Nanny-state decline?

Bob was prescient, It turns out to be the question of our times. It appears that at least half the population would irrationally rather inflict pain on those they disapprove of than better their own lives. Democrats clearly hate Trump far worse than they love their country. It’s a kind of madness.

Pardon me if I seem to repeat myself. Keep in mind that every time these municipal socialists mention that three billion dollars they say they were going to have to “give” to Amazon, what they really mean is three billion dollars that doesn’t exist yet, that they were going to refrain from stealing from Amazon in order to encourage the company to establish itself in New York. As the saying goes, they had just one job … In screwing up this deal, what New York loses to neoMarxism is the twenty-five thousand jobs I mentioned, along with some twenty-seven billion dollars (which equally don’t exist yet) in the area economy over the next decade or so. Three billion, twenty-seven billion … three billion, twenty-seven billion … WWAOCD?

What would Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez do?

Undoubtedly something stupid.

Like it or not, approve of it or not, this is an ancient and common arrangement between economy and state—it’s called “mercantilism”—and has been for centuries, long before Adam Smith wrote Wealth of Nations in 1776 complaining about it. My guess is that there are at least a thousand deals just like it being negotiated between businesses and city councils every day across the country. Meanwhile, New York continues to bleed to death financially and culturally from self-inflicted wounds: twenty-five thousand jobs, twenty-seven billion dollars.

Good going, Alexandria, you ignorant slut. Why don’t you take the next train to London?