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Everything here seems fine. Providing everyone with a veto on all things is a surefire way to get nothing. Instead we have a system where we have a set of rules and someone who meets those rules objectively gets to make something. This is way better.

I’m glad they were able to build their datacenter.

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If you give NIMBYs as much as an inch of decision-making power, they'll find a way of making you regret it.

For all the talk of "negative externalities", they sure aren't shy about imposing them on others.

Is a NIMBY a type of person or is it an incentive structure?

Both? People are very easy to FUD up about any local development, and they rarely bear any costs of denying those development.

Being eager to uncritically lap up any FUD thrown your way is definitely a personal failing. Let alone spreading that FUD. But the fact that NIMBYs are allowed to wield an outsized power and do things like stall nuclear power for decades? That companies can engage in underhanded "find an activist group that wants to NIMBY in an area where the competitor is trying to build and then just fund it"? Failure of an incentive structure.

What should be the correct procedure if I want to build, let's say, a pig farm that'll be extremely smelly for miles? Whose agreement should I have to get, and whose shouldn't I have to get?

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