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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   8364 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 3, 2026

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People living in a city should get a say over what is build in the city though. Data centers impact the environment, housing prices, and electricity availability. These are all issues that markets and investors do not care about, but locals do. And I don't see why the concerns of investors should be more important than the concerns of the people whose lives they will impact.

Right, but that's a different argument. OliveTapenade quotes the article:

They clearly saw it as like a widget — a toy — and maybe there are these risks, maybe there’s the job stuff, but fundamentally they were like: This thing is not that useful. I don’t really see in my personal life how this could justify these gigantic valuations.

And adds his own opinion:

A big part of the dissonance, it seems to me, is around the perception of what 'AI' is and whether it's valuable.

This isn't saying that cities can't regulate what gets built nearby, it's saying that regulation is needed because they don't believe that a market exists for building X. To use a much simpler example I've seen in the UK, it's saying that you can't open up a new chain coffee store in my town because there are already several coffee stores nearby and it's not needed - essentially saying I know you're willing to invest your own money in this business venture, but I've decided I know better than the markets.

This thing is not that useful to me. The citizen has no reason to believe a datacenter will impact his community positively. The dispute is not that the things won't be useful to the owner or shareholders. The issue is that it won't be useful to those asked to sacrifice for it.

I'm not disputing that, I'm saying that the argument is very often "This thing is not that useful to me, and therefore, to anyone"

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