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Comment by mgrunwald_ | Hacker News Reader

This method works better in a free market. Instead of outright banning things, you simply build a system that encourages/disencourages specific things and it basically runs on autopilot.

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Except when the AI businesses have lots of available money, so they might not care about the extra taxes (they're spending billions anyway). There's also the problem that they might destroy the future agricultural worth of the land with e.g. polluted waste water.

Given that they don't want agricultural land used for data centers, it makes more sense to just ban them rather than allowing it if they get some extra cash.

Please let's not fool ourselves that AI businesses don't care about costs because they have a lot of money. They burn a lot of money, yes, but they are looking for profitability and they won't achieve it with a 200% tax on top of large energy bills and hardware expenses.

The timing can make a big difference though, as they might be happy to burn through money to get better adoption, especially if that pumps up their stock price. Also, if the executive making the decision is looking to jump ship, then they might not care about the long term impact.

I don't think they are happy about burning through money, especially if they can just build their data center somewhere else and avoid the 200% tax. The moment of reckoning is happening in real time, all paid plans for AI models are heavily subsidised and heavy users are absolutely ruining their finances. Do you think they would want to build their data center specifically in a 200% data center tax area to make their financial situation even worse? I don't think so.

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