Hacker News Reader

Comment by lovich | Hacker News Reader

> The noise is all high-frequency which means most anything will stop it. Frankly building an earth berm around the site would kill all the noise and make it better to look at. Throw in some trees and you're done.

Have any of these data centers done this? All the ones I’ve seen haven’t even put up a sound baffling wall. If a data center’s owner has taken steps to ameliorate or completely prevent their negative externalities then opposition to them definitely looks like NIMBYism.

If, however, you’re just saying they _could_ prevent the problems, but then never do, I’m even more inclined to support the people telling them to fuck off.

View on HN

The developer (likely) won't do it in isolation.

But the point of building permits, and building regs and so on is to create requirements that let the development live in harmony with the community.

If local govt is not stipulating the requirements then that's on them.

People don't need to be "against data centers" they need to be "for no noise" and so on.

> The developer (likely) won't do it in isolation.

Do you not see how people might be angry at someone who dumps their problems onto your doorstep unless the government forces them not to?

You don't get angry with the scorpion for stinging the frog. He is just behaving according to his nature.

The US is in a late-capitalist phase right now. It's gotten here because the voting public think it's a good thing. Every two years they go to the polls and vote for "business friendly" parties and policies. And indeed most Americans today would say Capitailism is great, Govt intervention is bad, fewer regulations gets stuff done. Anything other than rabid capitalism is defacto Communism.

And while very popular right now getting angry at all serves no purpose. When everyone is angry about everything all the time it ceases to be notable.

What is purposeful is taking an interest in local govt. It's alerting your council as to your concerns. And by encouraging neighbors to do the same. It's in thinking beyond the simplistic "pro business at all costs" rhetoric. It's understanding that current US policies, foreign and domestic, are specifically designed to make companies richer and citizens poorer.

And understand that you're not in a fight to stop development. You're in a fight to make the development work in harmony with the community, and not against it. The opposite of ugly corporate behavior is not communism.

> You don't get angry with the scorpion for stinging the frog. He is just behaving according to his nature.

It’s a nice analogy but it’s still people making these decisions. I will in fact get angry at someone who decides to dump their trash on my lawn because it’s in their nature to be a piece of shit. And that’s why people are angry at these data center companies.

> And understand that you're not in a fight to stop development. You're in a fight to make the development work in harmony with the community, and not against it.

Yea, and people vote to not have data centers in their towns and get overridden anyway. So now it is a fight to stop development, from the view of these people trying to stop the data centers from being built and dumping noise and air pollution on them.

> The opposite of ugly corporate behavior is not communism.

Don’t know where this non sequitur came from. At no point was communism being discussed. Being against actions of companies that have a negative impact on your life does not have anything to do with communism.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com