<story><title>Amazon&apos;s electricity rate discounts have pushed up utility costs</title><url>https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-20/amazon-isn-t-paying-its-electric-bills-you-might-be</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>jrockway</author><text>I feel like this is nothing new.  Every few years, some major sportsball team threatens to leave their city unless the taxpayers fork over mega-billions for a new stadium.  Despite any measurable economic benefits to having a stadium, the cities fall for it every time.  It&amp;#x27;s the same thing, right?  Amazon says &amp;quot;give us free electricity and we&amp;#x27;ll make jobs&amp;quot;, and the politicians buy it even though it&amp;#x27;s very unlikely to be true.&lt;p&gt;Maybe someday we&amp;#x27;ll get an itemized tax bill, so you can see that you paid $4.12 for Amazon&amp;#x27;s electricity and $1.23 for a new sports arena, and can vote for someone else if that upsets you.  Now that I think about it, that will never happen.  And so, the cycle continues.</text></comment>
<story><title>Amazon&apos;s electricity rate discounts have pushed up utility costs</title><url>https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-20/amazon-isn-t-paying-its-electric-bills-you-might-be</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>jdshutt</author><text>Interesting that the regulations they&amp;#x27;re running up against were built to constrain the railroads, since this looks almost identical to the railroad rebates that Standard Oil and other gilded age trusts used to pump up their monopolies at the expense of smaller competitors and regular people. Basically, if you&amp;#x27;re a big enough customer, you can play service providers (railroads, power companies, municipal governments, etc.) against each other to get absurdly below-market rates and stick the bill to someone with less bargaining power. The railroad regulations were passed after a series of exposés of Standard Oil and other monopolists that took advantage of secret rebates.&lt;p&gt;More on Standard Oil, rebates, and the breakup of the trust: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;repository.law.umich.edu&amp;#x2F;cgi&amp;#x2F;viewcontent.cgi?referer=https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;duckduckgo.com&amp;#x2F;&amp;amp;httpsredir=1&amp;amp;article=1125&amp;amp;context=articles&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;repository.law.umich.edu&amp;#x2F;cgi&amp;#x2F;viewcontent.cgi?referer...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;I also recommend Titan, the well-researched John D. Rockefeller, Sr. biography by Ron Chernow.</text></comment>