Technology Corridor Corporatism

Recently, we read about the Technology Corridor being bruited by the Pinal County BOS in conjunction with Arizona universities. Pinal Cy is going to pay UA $225,000 for “research, planning and leadership,” as well as $108,200 to ASU for an inland port study. To this, we add the resources consumed by county officials working on the plan, which is supposed to attract “$70 billion worth of high-tech companies” to Pinal Cy over a 35-year period.

So, basically, the idea is that

1. The county develops the infrastructure for the Technology Corridor
2.  Technology companies looking for a location for their facilities, noticing that Pinal County has done this, will be motivated to locate their facilities in the Technology Corridor.
3. More jobs locally, and the county government will be rewarded for its efforts by increased tax revenues.

This looks to me like a feature of what can be called a “corporatist” political economy.

Corporatism is the alliance of (usually big) business and government to create top-down solutions to economic and social “problems,” or, in its most grandiose version, to simply be the locus of decision-making in most or all socio-economic sectors of society. In other words, the big bosses of everything.

One feature of the corporatist plan for the development of Pinal County was not mentioned in the article. That is that the capital for the development of the plan and the creation of the infrastructure is to be provided by the taxpayers of Pinal County.

The corporatist model can be contrasted with the laissez-faire model. In the laissez-faire model, capital for planning and implementation of infrastructure would be provided by entrepreneurs. The entreprenuers would be the ones to voluntarily risk their capital in hopes of procuring future profits.

On the other hand, the corporatist model has the taxpayers involuntarily providing the capital for no future reward!

Don't get me wrong; I'm not against economic development. But I think that justice has to take precedence. A just, or at least more just, way of promoting economic development in Pinal County would be to lower or abolish taxes on businesses, thus creating a business-friendly political environment. Then let those who stand to benefit most from development be the ones to fund it.