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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   12507 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 8, 2025

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And more to the point... I don't think the real contention was that America CAN'T build. But between all the bureaucracy, environmentalism regs, NIMBYs, and cost disease, it just costs WAY more than it probably 'should' and thus things only get built if someone is enthusiastically willing to fund the process. Once they do, things happen very fast.

With Datacenters, we have motivated buyers utterly flush with cash so the cost obstacle is surmounted, at which point all the other steps can be done.

As I'm fond of pointing out, Florida built a high-speed rail system before California even broke ground on theirs because there were many many fewer unnecessary obstacles to doing it. Simple as.

I don't think the real contention was that America CAN'T build.

There are three issues here - a skill level issue where the hard costs of a big project are a lot higher than they would be in a country that didn't suck, a political culture issue where either NIMBYs kill the project or soft costs explode fighting them off, and a bloat issue where projects get overspecified because it isn't anyone's job to control costs.

As regards large-scale civil engineering, the US has all three problems, such that the overall cost of new roads is 3-5x the cheapest European countries * and the cost of new rail infrastructure is 5-10x (10-20x in NYC).

With data centres, I suspect the skill level issue is mitigated because Google and suchlike can hire first-rate people to do unglamorous work in a way neither the government nor the big construction contractors can. The NIMBY issue can be managed by building in red states, or by Big Tech buying the Government of California en bloc. I suspect Google eats the bloat, and Elon personally trims bloated projects at 3am with his hands while shitposting with his feet, or some other similar feat of workaholism.

* Per Alon Levy, these are Spain, Sweden, Turkey and the less corrupt parts of Italy. France is slightly better than average, Germany slightly worse, and the UK shockingly bad when compared to anywhere except North America.

between all the bureaucracy, environmentalism regs, NIMBYs, and cost disease, it just costs WAY more than it probably 'should'

I think an important aspect is that those things largely don't apply to data centers in the same way they do to any public infrastructure or factories. A data center is essentially just a large building with power and network connectivity and cooling. There is no real noise or chemicals involved so safety regulations don't apply and of course it isn't a public building so the local politicians or interest groups don't get a say. It also doesn't have to be located in city center so there's no "social" aspect and in general the location is not critical so NIMBYism is much less important.

And yet you get people screaming about water and electricity usage (being fair, the latter is a concern).

They have successfully shut them down before:

https://www.kold.com/2025/12/02/county-city-leaders-amazon-pulls-out-embattled-project-blue/

https://wsbt.com/news/local/st-joseph-county-council-denies-rezoning-of-land-for-data-center-votes-7-2-marathon-meeting-hours-long-public-opinion-13-billion-dollar-project-amazon-new-carlisle-approval-process-plan-commission-st-joseph-county-indiana

https://www.fauquiernow.com/news/warrenton-town-council-passes-resolutions-to-address-legal-disputes-in-amazon-data-center-cases-halt/article_6f98e20c-d36c-11ef-885a-9bc61bdcc17c.html

I agree with your overall point, datacenters are less objectionable than average... so imagine what building anything more objectionable would take!

Let me just say for the record, I am SO glad that NASA exists simply because by building out their facilities at Cape Canaveral back when Florida was barely populated, we've got a large rocket launch complex that didn't have to be built in barely accessible mountains or something. Can you imagine the fuss residents would put up if someone suggested building 40 launchpads near a populated area?

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