To have fun, it must be an equal competition played under agreed rules. The same circumstances can be applied in business. As an example, neither tennis player could have as much fun, get as much exercise, or be as challenged by hitting a ball off a wall. What gives the game value is the cooperative competition. In the process, states give free land, low-interest loans, and billions of dollars worth of tax breaks.
Industry plays the states against each other, fishing for higher subsidies with new jobs as bait.
North Carolina was generous to get RJR Nabisco to build a huge, new bakery near Garner, southeast of Raleigh. If the states would cooperate, refuse to compete, all business and industry would still have to locate somewhere and pay taxes that would help states improve their education, health care, and law enforcement to the benefit of everyone in the area, including the new industries. That isn't likely to happen in today's competitive world. Perhaps not in North Carolina, but as long as the states continue to compete for industry, there will be another fiasco somewhere. Another place where the price of competition is obvious and painful is the Congress of the United States.