How America's 200-Year Marketing Scam Built an Economy—And Why AI Is Using the Same Playbook

300 lots sold in 3 hours. All of them underwater—literally beneath Tampa Bay. Welcome to 1924 Florida, where boosterism turned swampland into gold and reality into an optional extra.

This wasn't fraud, exactly. It was boosterism—America's secret economic weapon for over 200 years. The strategy is simple: sell the future before it exists, bet everything on optimism, and hope reality catches up to the hype.

Spoiler alert: sometimes it actually works.

The Hype Machine That Built America

Boosterism isn't just aggressive marketing—it's been the engine of American expansion since the country's founding. And the track record is surprisingly mixed.

Take the 1893 Chicago World's Fair. City boosters spent millions creating a "White City" that was essentially a massive marketing stunt. 27 million people visited during its six-month run—half the U.S. population at the time. Most of the fair's buildings are long gone (only 2 structures remain), but Chicago emerged as a major American city. Mission accomplished.

Los Angeles perfected the formula in the 1920s. The LA Chamber of Commerce distributed hundreds of thousands of promotional brochures annually, painting the city as a sun-soaked paradise. The population exploded from 100,000 in 1900 to 1.2 million by 1930. Not bad for what was essentially a desert with good PR.

But success stories obscure the casualties. The 1862 Homestead Act promised opportunity while displacing Indigenous peoples. Late 1800s newspapers ran glowing "articles" about towns that barely existed, leaving settlers stranded at empty train depots. Boosterism delivers growth, but rarely mentions who pays the bill.

Same Script, Silicon Valley Actors

Fast-forward to 2026, and the playbook hasn't changed—just the product being sold. Instead of Florida swampland, we're buying AI utopias and data center salvation.

Google's$1 billion data center announcement in Scioto County, Ohio, is pure historical poetry. This is the same region where America's first major land speculation scheme unfolded in 1787. The Scioto Company sold Ohio lots to European buyers before actually owning the land. Sound familiar?

Today's AI boosters promise automation will create more jobs than it destroys, that data centers will revitalize struggling regions, and that we're on the verge of solving climate change and maybe even death—if only we trust the process and avoid pesky regulations.

The 2017-2018 Amazon HQ2 competition was boosterism at scale. Hundreds of cities offered tax breaks, infrastructure upgrades, and regulatory "flexibility" to win Amazon's favor. Arlington, Virginia, ultimately won, but the real question is whether the promised benefits materialized for existing residents or just created new inequalities.

The Austin Exception—And Its Hidden Costs

Sometimes boosterism genuinely works. Austin transformed from a sleepy college town into a tech hub, attracting major companies and high-paying jobs. But even success stories have footnotes written in displacement.

Housing costs skyrocketed. Long-time residents got priced out. The promised prosperity went largely to transplants with the right skills and credentials. Austin boomed, but for whom?

This pattern repeats across America's would-be Silicon Valleys. Officials offer incentives, tech companies arrive, and the benefits concentrate among newcomers while locals bear the infrastructure strain and rising costs.

The Hoover Warning

In his 1928 presidential acceptance speech, Herbert Hoover declared: "In America today we are nearer a final triumph over poverty than in any other land at any other time. The poorhouse has vanished from among us."

Months later, the stock market crashed. The Great Depression followed.

Hoover's words remind us that boosterism's greatest danger isn't outright fraud—it's the intoxication of inevitable progress. When optimism becomes economic policy, skeptics get dismissed as obstacles to growth rather than voices of caution.

The New Manifest Destiny

Today's AI boosters speak of "disruption" instead of "manifest destiny," but the underlying logic is identical: believe hard enough, move fast enough, and reality will catch up to the pitch.

Data centers promise to revitalize rural communities while straining power grids. AI companies insist their technology will democratize opportunity while concentrating unprecedented power. The language has evolved, but the fundamental bargain remains: trust us with the present, and we'll deliver an amazing future.

The question isn't whether boosterism works—history proves it sometimes does. The question is who benefits when it succeeds, and who suffers when it doesn't.