So what you're saying -- if I get you correctly -- is that you have an ideological objection to the city doing any kind of business development because it's not their money on the line.  This instance is irrelevant because you feel there's not a sufficient feedback loop to make the city only support moneymaking ventures...is that right?

If so, that's a bit beyond the scope of this article, which is more specifically about whether this venture is making money for the city or not.  The ideological question is perfectly valid but not really about whether the city's investment in Providence Park has paid off.  To have a good discussion about that we'd need to see a lot more about a representative sample of public and private investments across varying forms of government, decide what quantifies "success" (if it loses a little money but makes people happier to live there, was it worth the cost?), and a great deal more.

Big picture thinking, but we're not talking about the same thing.