For over a year, Amazon dangled the prize of a second headquarters, or HQ2, in front of cities across the country, and then watched as they duked it out. The result was a sort of hypercapitalist Hunger Games, in which cities and states debased themselves in the hopes of reaping tens of thousands of jobs and several billion dollars in investment. The biggest bidders promised billions in tax breaks and subsidies, while smaller municipalities resorted to more creative measures: The mayor of Stonecrest, Georgia, offered to build a town named Amazon and to anoint CEO Jeff Bezos, the richest man alive, as its king.

That competition apparently ended last week, when it was reported that Amazon had chosen the Solomon option: not one, but two additional headquarters. One would be located in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C., the other in Queens, New York. It was an anticlimactic end, given the expectations. But if indeed Amazon has decided to split HQ2 among two of America’s most profitable cities, the tech behemoth may exacerbate several societal problems—including one it claims to want to solve.



The HQ2 selection process was always a racket. Often referred to as a “sweepstakes,” it was designed for only one winner: Amazon. The company not only garnered free, widespread publicity, but also drove up its asking price, as some competitors raised their bids by billions. It’s possible that the plan all along was not to open a second headquarters, but to open two, smaller satellites. What’s unlikely, however, is that the deals being offered to Amazon will change significantly, even though the company is effectively halving their investment.



Amazon has already faced backlash for its handling of HQ2. The $1 trillion company is hardly in need of public handouts, and yet it has benefited greatly from taxpayer dollars in recent years. It may have sensed there would be further backlash over its decision, which would explain why the news broke on the eve of the midterm elections, effectively burying it. Unlike other localities, which made their offers public, not much is known about the bids from New York City and Virginia. But the public scrutiny of HQ2 will only intensify as the details—and the social consequences of HQ2—become clear.

The D.C. suburbs were always seen as a favorite, given that Bezos owns The Washington Post and that Amazon’s lobbying spending has increased dramatically in recent years. He also appears to enjoy spending time there. New York, where Bezos worked as a hedge fund manager before moving west, has been Silicon Valley’s closest tech rival for some time. But there were also strong reasons not to choose either New York or D.C., since neither is desperate for economic investment or high-skilled jobs. In fact, Amazon’s presence may be a net negative for both places.