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Comment by afavour | Hacker News Reader

It’s a one year moratorium. I don’t see a problem with this. A lot of voters are concerned about the impacts data centers will have, those concerns are not entirely unwarranted.

We don’t actually have to be moving at breakneck speeds, the AI companies just want you to think we do. A pause to investigate seems warranted.

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Blocking is easy, UN-blocking is hard (see: zoning and housing). There are no objective concerns to be met, and there will never be. I would bet a lot of money the moratorium is indefinitely extended every year.

Always thought letting populism define a "slow-down" was silly, its a moratorium and a permanent veto everyone is looking for. It's fine, the data centers will be built elsewhere in more politically impoverished states, New York and especially NYC will still reap the benefits and offload solving the gnarly energy problems to someone else. Federalism working?

> There are no objective concerns to be met

Are you sure? Most of the objections I've seen center around environmental impact and effect on residential energy pricing in the surrounding area. Both of these seem to be to be objectively measurable.

> the data centers will be built elsewhere in more politically impoverished states

What does "politically impoverished" mean? I'd say more "politically permissive" states would make more sense here. Red states are not impoverished of politics, they just have different politics.

"environmental impact and effect on residential energy pricing"

Sooo, how does that change in New York in a year? You've mostly re-inforced my point. And specifically the bill doesn't use any automatic re-enablement criteria, so data centers are basically dead in the state.

Realistically, this is a canard, AI scares people and environmental impact is a lever to use to stop it. Ask yourself this: if this was a new Ford plant (dirtier, also uses a lot of energy), would we be having this conversation?

I actually do mean politically impoverished. Banning Data centers is a horsehoe populism issue, the right wing loves it too. The data center builders will just have to find municipalities with less people and/or a less engaged political atmosphere aka politically impoverished. They mostly already have.

Yeah - there seem to be a lot of pretenses which don't actually justify banning a particular industry.

If environmental concerns were the real issue, we'd be talking about how to tweak those regulations. If power distribution was the real issue, we'd be talking about the economics of power companies, and tweaking the rules about billing for infrastructure upgrades.

It's strange how we're suddenly talking about things like illegal concrete dumping, as if concrete foundations were somehow specific to datacenters, and not 99% of buildings built in the past century.

> If environmental concerns were the real issue, we'd be talking about how to tweak those regulations. If power distribution was the real issue, we'd be talking about the economics of power companies

Who's "we" in this statement? It can't be be the general public because historically, legally, and morally, the persons causing the problem are responsible for addressing it. When CFC refrigerants were damaging the ozone, "we" didn't talk about alternative chemistry for heat transfer, we adopted the Montreal Protocol and the industry had to figure out the solutions while being legally constrained from externalizing harm to the general public.

My point is essentially that there are no new problems here, just the usual problems that we already have regulatory frameworks to address. Sometimes those existing frameworks are imperfect, e.g. in some states, power companies can't charge large customers for many of the infrastructure upgrades needed to serve them.

There's no novel problem here that any particular industry would need to find novel solutions for. Just some states ought to tweak their rules about the costs of distribution infrastructure upgrades.

If "this" was a single new Ford plant, I would imagine that the local population around it would be having a similar conversation.

If Ford announced that they were opening 10 new plants in every state, then yes, I imagine HackerNews would be having this exact conversation about it.

The other factor is that these tech backed build outs seem to revel in flaunting regulations. More established businesses tend to at least check the regulatory boxes when building new things. Meanwhile, I opened Reuters this morning to this article:

https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/pollution-musks-unper...

"Meanwhile, I opened Reuters this morning to this article"

This is not a measure of anything, except "news that is popular".

What you're looking for is fraction of datacenters that flaunt regulations, and I'm guessing you don't have those numbers and I'm betting they aren't that actually egregious compared to..anyone else building things. Again, I'm not saying this is bad politics, but let's not claim there is some actual issue here.

I mentioned politically impoverished communities, and that explains the Reuters headline more than anything specific about the people that build datacenters and how much they love polluting the air around Black communities.

P.S: Extremely funny for Mr.Solar Panel-Electric cars to now be installing Gas Turbines to run his data centers.

Sure, that's a fair point. You're right that I don't have those numbers, and I would be willing to be that at the moment, no one does.

> I'm betting they aren't that actually egregious compared to..anyone else building things

And I'm betting the opposite. As little as I trust the current industrial leaders, I trust Altman, Dario, Zuckerberg, and Musk far less. Maybe in 5 - 10 years when the dust is more settled we'll have a better picture.

Regardless, data centers are drawing moratoriums and regulation because they're the ones building things. If 500 new massive auto plants were planned to be built out in the next 5 years, they would also draw similar ire. It's only specific to data centers because that's what's actually happening, and we live in a world that is capable of responding to the actual events that are unfolding.

For what it's worth, I do agree with you about the politically impoverished communities bearing the brunt of our negative externalities. I would like it if we had regulation that priced in those externalities so we couldn't just dump them on communities that are unable to combat them.

> Sooo, how does that change in New York in a year? You've mostly re-inforced my point

It won’t change at all, of course. I think maybe you don’t understand the reason for the moratorium. A year can be taken to assess what effects are likely to come about and how acceptable they are. Create some guidelines. Right now data centers are being built with no consideration for the effect on the surrounding area and, big surprise, people don’t like that.

> Banning Data centers is a horsehoe populism issue, the right wing loves it too.

Eh. The right wing is far more responsive to business wants than it is to populist demands. Right wing politicians do not like banning data centers even if right wing voters do.

"A year can be taken to assess what effects are likely to come about and how acceptable they are. Create some guidelines. "

Yea, and my bet is none of this is going to happen. There is simply no incentive to make it happen. Why would a government take all these steps? What's the incentive? Much easier to just keep things the way they are, or more likely, simply re-sense the political headwinds in a year.

"The right wing is far more responsive to business wants"

This is all pre-Trump thinking. Trump just randomly banned Fable, tonnes of MAGA politicos running on the "ban datacenter" ticket, all this is simply no longer true.

Republicans are still remarkably pro business. Fable is the exception.

Manufacturing plants bring jobs. What benefits do datacenters bring to their communities?

I don't love the phrase "politically permissive" because it kind of implies a natural bias of "permissive for corporations" which is usually, then, less permissive for private citizens like you or I.

For example, allowing flock cameras is more "permissive" maybe, but for me, now I have more surveillance to worry about. I am, effectively, "permitted" to do less. So is it permissive really, or just permissive for the "right" party? The party which, lo-and-behold, happens to have more both literal capital than me and political capital?

Politically impoverished is kind of nice, because:

- Red states are "impoverished" politically in that there's very little competition of competing ideas. It's mostly just converged on who's the most christian and most white, and it's become a hivemind. Obviously not all. But I live in Texas. Have you seen political ads in Texas? It's almost 100% just virtue signaling "I'M the most christian!!1"

- Red state fiscal policy often leads to, like, actual poverty. Most red states are very poor, or at least their inhabitants are. There are exceptions, like Texas. But even in Texas: if you drive through Central, South, or West Texas, you will just encounter town after town after town that are borderline abandoned and obviously riddled with abject poverty.

Exactly.

Wall Street is gonna finance these projects and make their cut wherever the projects ultimately are. NY state is simply ensuring that no concrete batch plant in Oneonta accidentally gets rich along the way too,

Un-blocking is still easier than un-building.

Good. AI is an evil technology. These data centers shouldn't be built anywhere ever.

What about the technology itself is evil?

To some extent you wonder if this "tapping the brakes" might be saving some companies from themselves. It's likely we're in the overinvestment phase of this technological cycle and that's usually followed by the bust phase where a lot of companies with a lot of debt go under. See The Panic of 1873 and the overbuilding of railroads (and huge debt accumulation) that led to that.

> We don’t actually have to be moving at breakneck speeds

According to one Canadian, er sorry, a UE citizen, er sorry, an Irishman named Kevin O'Leary, who is seeing Chinese spys everywhere, we actually do need to move with breakneck speed, because otherwise the quality of American lives will be forever gone. Or at least infuse of naive VC money flowing into his pockets will be gone.

I also feel like there has been very little discussion of a localized benefit of data centers compared to the negative impacts. As someone who uses AI and other services that need data centers, I certainly understand why they need to exist. I have not heard a compelling argument for why they need to exist anywhere near me. I'm generally anti-NIMBY, but usually with the understanding that there is actually benefit to certain things existing in my proverbial backyard. If that argument exists for data centers I've yet to hear it.

Yup. This is my main issue with these datacenters. They have a few major local negatives (higher electrical prices, potentially high pollution, noise) and almost no real benefit due to their location.

I experience no difference when I run my LLM either here in the US or in the EU or even in China.

So why should these be given any special treatment and tax benefits? They don't really create jobs locally (beyond the initial construction) and they won't bring in any sort of tax revenue beyond what you could get from property taxes. That makes them just a general nuisance. They are much like sewage or landfills, they serve a purpose and are needed but boy would I never want one near me (unless the company actually ends up paying for my community).

It certainly doesn't help that AI CEOs just can't help but to larp as Captain Planet supervillans when giving public talks to investors.

Let's be honest. There is a way to safely build data centers. Sensible laws could be made for them to build enough solar so they can power themselves or they are responsible for the cost of increasing capacity. Things like environmental impact and pollution need to be taken into account. However, since this is America, that won't happen. So companies will build these data centers in red states with little to no regulation and those people will pay for the increase in power capacity, the environmental and public health damages, etc...

Exactly. Towns are also increasingly nervous that when the bottom drops out of the AI bubble they’ll be left with abandoned half-built data centers blighting their communities.

It’s a serious concern that looks increasingly plausible. The bond market for financing buildouts is looking shaky and even Amazon struggled there in its last go at loaning money to fuel the buildout. That doesn’t bode well for others.

Even a completed one has limited use to other industries

> We don’t actually have to be moving at breakneck speeds

There are a lot of bankrupt companies and fallen nations that believed this. Complacency will hurt you, but only when you realize it too late.

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