They don’t get to learn. Most municipalities have a really limited scope of geographic influence, so if they don’t offer the incentives, then the megacorp convinces the community five miles away to offer the incentive. If you are in the first community that passed on the store you lose even the scraps of income you would have gotten by offering the incentive and your existing retail is just as crushed. Everyone knows that they will lose in the long run under the current system, but they will lose 5-10 years faster if they don’t play along. What we really need is stronger regional/state antipoaching agreements to stop the practice.
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