Shortly after Amazon — a company worth more than $500 billion — announced last year it would be building a second headquarters, dubbed HQ2, it was deluged with hundreds of bids by municipalities and state governments offering all sorts of taxpayer giveaways to reel the company in.

The bidding war served as a sort of absurd reality show, as cities competed to win the affection of Amazon tycoon Jeff Bezos. Only instead of a “Bachelor”-esque rose ceremony, Amazon in mid-January released a shortlist of 20 cities and regions among which it will now pick one to establish HQ2.

Those cities are now lining up to intensify their roles in the bidding process, as Amazon has promised it will use the next few months to “dive deeper” into the offers each location has made. New Jersey for example, has proposed spending $7 billion in incentives to draw Amazon to Newark. Chicago’s multibillion-dollar bid includes an offer of free land worth up to $100 million.

But what if the remaining 20 cities decided to stop racing to the bottom — offering all sorts of subsidies and other giveaways to the company to lure it to their locations — and instead collectively bargained with the company?

Richard Florida, a University of Toronto professor who studies urban policy, suggested on Twitter that the competing cities form a non-aggression pact and tell Amazon they are not going to continue to beg the company for HQ2 with incentives and giveaways: