Amazon is seeking a location for its second corporate campus — already known as “HQ2” — and the company has turned its search into a surreal spectacle by inviting local governments to publicly court the multi-billion-dollar company with tax incentives and subsidy packages. Public officials are eagerly playing along — in one case even offering to change their town’s name to “Amazon” if selected — and hurling billions of dollars worth of tax cuts Amazon’s way.

That’s public money, of course, that might otherwise go to vital public services like schools and sanitation.

With so much publicity around the Amazon sweepstakes, commentators are more attuned than usual to the grotesquerie of the spectacle of ultra-rich corporations soliciting public money, and politicians’ willingness to hand it over. Ask an average progressive what they think of wooing the private sector on the public dime, and they’ll probably tell you it should be illegal.