<story><title>Governments should compete for residents, not businesses</title><url>https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-03-07/amazon-hq2-pause-could-be-a-sign-of-a-new-era-for-development</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>cyclecount</author><text>This line of thinking comes up often on HN but it ignores the central reason for governments to enact borders, a rather modern invention.  Governments (at the behest of businesses) enforce borders so that labor cannot effectively organise.  A border exists often for workers only, but is mostly a legal fiction that corporations can easily navigate.&lt;p&gt;The most common example for the Americans reading this is NAFTA, which makes workers in Detroit compete with workers in Mexico (suppressing wages in both location) while allowing the auto manufacturing companies to treat all of North America as one market.  Toyota can move their plants around the region somewhat freely; can someone in Mexico freely move to the midwest?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>remarkEon</author><text>&amp;gt; Governments (at the behest of businesses) enforce borders so that labor cannot effectively organise.&lt;p&gt;I have never heard this explanation. Where is it coming from? It sounds not only wrong but inverted to me. Governments enforce borders to effectively secure their territory and people, and thus its own power. Is the idea that, without the “legal fiction” of borders, we’d have some kind of global autoworkers Union or something?</text></comment>
<story><title>Governments should compete for residents, not businesses</title><url>https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-03-07/amazon-hq2-pause-could-be-a-sign-of-a-new-era-for-development</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>cyclecount</author><text>This line of thinking comes up often on HN but it ignores the central reason for governments to enact borders, a rather modern invention.  Governments (at the behest of businesses) enforce borders so that labor cannot effectively organise.  A border exists often for workers only, but is mostly a legal fiction that corporations can easily navigate.&lt;p&gt;The most common example for the Americans reading this is NAFTA, which makes workers in Detroit compete with workers in Mexico (suppressing wages in both location) while allowing the auto manufacturing companies to treat all of North America as one market.  Toyota can move their plants around the region somewhat freely; can someone in Mexico freely move to the midwest?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>boh</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s really bizarre that state sovereignty is just considered a business practice. No it&amp;#x27;s not a &amp;quot;modern invention&amp;quot; to &amp;quot;enact&amp;quot; borders. Nor does labor organizing have anything to do with its enforcement. Corporate-centric culture doesn&amp;#x27;t do well in explaining the world. I&amp;#x27;d suggest a less narrow viewpoint.</text></comment>