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Comment by pj_mukh | Hacker News Reader

Appointing a council of elders who will think through every imagined horror before approving a project (or a “framework”) is basically the textbook definition of NIMBY-ism.

Every NIMBY thinks they’re being optimally thoughtful (tm), except the answer is always the same, two years of environment studies, followed by a loud resounding “No”.

Why would they approve anything? They have no incentive to.

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Do you think the EPA is "a council of elders"?

C'mon. Be reasonable for a second. Or at the very least actually read past the title before commenting.

This is actively seeking to reduce NIMBYism

> As part of the moratorium, Maine’s Data Center Coordination Council would study and oversee the environmental impact and electricity bill increases datacenters often bring to local residents and “consider data-sharing requirements and processes for proposed datacenters.”

https://www.404media.co/maine-datacenter-construction-bill-l...

I think you're much more likely to see actual populist NIMBYism if this bill was not passed

> Do you think the EPA is "a council of elders"?

Yes

What about the Department of Energy or Department of Education or Department of Commerce? Why not just do away with government in general. Let corporations do what they want

Yeah I think in a lot of cases getting rid of a government bureaucracy and replacing it with nothing would result in better outcomes for more people than continuing to let the government bureaucracy continue to exist and work counterproductively against good market outcomes because those good market outcomes impact a special interest group that's been able to gain poltical control of that bureaucracy. This is exactly what has happened with the Department of Education and it's a good reason why the Department of Education should be abolished (I'd go even further and abolish local public schools, privatizing all K-12 education)

The EPA comparison is moot. Data centers don’t dump chemicals into the water or emit toxic gasses. A data center is not more or less resource intensive than your typical factory. All already regulated.

What you’re asking for is an EPA for “do I approve of what this data center is used for?”. Which is insane.

Do Yimby’s actually believe in democracy or that markets should basically make every decision? Honestly starting to get a little suspicious.

If the whole voting population came together and said we’d like to pay ourselves $100,000 in straight cash today by borrowing it from future generations. Should they be able to do it in the name of direct democracy? Blocking all future growth due to aesthetic reasons is 10x worse, atleast the $100,000 could be meaningfully spent now.

Who decides things if not the entire voting population? There's nothing inherently wrong with your suggestion, if it's what everyone wants. We've been doing it for a century, see the national debt. But people like their kids, so we restrain it. People don't want a society full of desperation, so we restrain it. People want a strong nation, so we restrain it. It's not a crazy hypothetical, it's how the system works. Humans just aren't basic consumption machines.

Forget “democracy”. These stupid poor geezers need strong technocrats to guide them past their own ignorance.

Yeah I'm not buying it.

Look I live in a leafy affluent area and there's just no way in hell a data center would ever be built here. There will be lawyers.

Maine is poor.

This is the exact opposite of that though. This is people coming together and saying "lets put a temporary pause on new infrastructure until the research/science catches up so we make sure we don't screw things up for future generations". It's people prioritizing long term stable and healthy growth over short term profits and hype cycles

No NIMBY ever says “let’s just ban this!”, they always say “we need to study the issue more”. Almost always.

The science of hosting rack GPU servers in the middle of is unknown? Are you listening to yourself? Power and water usage is extremely well known. This isn’t a Nuclear Fusion site.

This is exactly what I mean though, if you can just keep claiming everything is an unknown you can successfully do nothing ever. The NIMBY mantra.

Spare me with the “temporary”, nobody will ever find the political will to actually approve data centers in Maine for the next quarter century, I can guarantee it.

The textbook definition of NIMBYism is as an acronym for "Not In My Backyard" aka "saying no to changes adjacent or close to me".

This is completely different than what you're describing (even if the end results are sometimes the same).

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