if you are in hole keep digging

This is a lovely picture of the (mostly) brand-new Boston Convention & Exhibition Center, which has been the subject of some pretty decent stories in the Boston Globe recently. Officials in charge of the BCEC are trying to float plans to increase the size of the center and build more hotels around it. They argue, aided and abetted by some convention center industry consultants, that if they don't make the place bigger then Boston will not be able to compete with other cities who are doing exactly the same thing.

This is a very simple economics problem. If supply outstrips demand for a relatively homogenous good or service then there is no reasonable way to sustainably maintain a constant price level. In fact, it is absolute madness on the part of one supplier to increase the quanitity of this good or service with the expectation that market share can be expanded or prices sustained.

What I think needs to happen with the BCEC is that more money needs to be injected into the Fort Point neighborhoods so that the whole area becomes a more desireable place to live and visit. Building extra square footage in what is probably the largest building in all of New England would result in some temporary construction jobs, but would do nothing to bring in more revenue.