Good reporting alert

From the Seattle Times:

But what’s remarkable is the degree Boeing also wants the public to pay its basic costs. Including, it said, “acquiring site, constructing facility, building infrastructure and procuring equipment/tooling.”

That’s right — we are to buy the land, the factories and the machines that go inside, or at least a share of them. And give it all to Boeing, or let them use it rent-free.

“Company preference is toward a location that will share in the cost of all capital expenditures,” Boeing wrote.

Now that’s socialism. It’s the corporate variety, and it isn’t all bad, what with the good-paying jobs and boost to the local economy. But having the public buy the means of production — socializing the capitalists’ risks (though definitely not their profits) — is a far cry from free enterprise. Almost as far, in a different direction, as what the socialist was going on about.

I think that this point is right on.  It is one thing to ask for tax relief or talk about infrastructure, but when the company is asking the state to build the means of production then it really is socialism.  Whether these profits go to a corrupt apparatchik or to the management of a publicly traded corporation is irrelevant.  What is important is that nobody can realistically compete with the state.  So this type of behavior gives a subsidy to some folks, and prevent entry into the market by competitors with fewer political connections.  

Food for thought, really.