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New York becomes the first state to impose a data center moratorium

reuters.com

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Re: New York becomes the first state to impose a data center moratorium

#151

Post by cwmma »

whartung wrote: post #97

How are (can) datacenters be taxed? Mind, I don't know, but normally you put in a business, or factory, etc. the state can tax the economic output of the factory. The factory builds things, sells things, they tax the sales of those things. Local employees get salaries that can be taxed, etc. Of course, property taxes on the land and improvements. But how does that work with a datacenter? If I pay $5 for an EC2 instan…

If you can't tax the outputs you tax the input.

So force then to pay more for electricity or water either through direct taxes or by forcing them to subsidize other users.

Re: New York becomes the first state to impose a data center moratorium

#152

Post by pembrook »

text0404 wrote: post #140
pembrook wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And they will, because Texas allows building. Question, how do you think the entire infrastructure around you that you’ve taken for granted your whole life was built? If you were asked, would you have voted to allow the building of your own home, the infrastructure and roads around it, and the businesses whose tax revenue funds your local municipality you suddenly are so concerned about? One of the most bizarre contr…

> If you were asked, would you have voted to allow the building of your own home, the infrastructure and roads around it, and the businesses whose tax revenue funds your local municipality you suddenly are so concerned about? If there were proper studies on the environmental and economic impacts, instead of blindly building without due diligence. The issue is that data centers are being built without this kind of ana…

Hate to confront you with reality, but if you're in the US, 95% of the infrastructure around you was built in a world prior to the sham obstructionist cudgel of "environmental impact studies" even existed.

So the answer is no, you would not have voted to build everything around you that currently exists.

Btw, have you ever looked into how your municipality funds its services and where that tax money comes from? I have some bad news for you.

Re: New York becomes the first state to impose a data center moratorium

#154

Post by giantg2 »

dylan604 wrote: post #134
giantg2 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Replacing natural lands with solar farms is one of the stupidest things I've seen. They're doing that on some state parks near me.

What would be unnatural lands that you'd find acceptable for use?

Existing infrastructure, such as roofs and parking lots.

Re: New York becomes the first state to impose a data center moratorium

#155

Post by text0404 »

pembrook wrote: post #152
text0404 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you were asked, would you have voted to allow the building of your own home, the infrastructure and roads around it, and the businesses whose tax revenue funds your local municipality you suddenly are so concerned about? If there were proper studies on the environmental and economic impacts, instead of blindly building without due diligence. The issue is that data centers are being built without this kind of ana…

Hate to confront you with reality, but if you're in the US, 95% of the infrastructure around you was built in a world prior to the sham obstructionist cudgel of "environmental impact studies" even existed. So the answer is no, you would not have voted to build everything around you that currently exists. Btw, have you ever looked into how your municipality funds its services and where that tax money comes from? I hav…

Thanks for telling me how I think. If we're doing that, let me tell you how you think: you don't care about people and want to pursue profit over human life, and will go to any length to defend a private corporation over the people who have to live with the negative impacts of its poor decisions.

Not sure if you're aware of this, but a large portion of the infrastructure that was built before environmental impact studies existed caused severe health issues for the surrounding communities, including cancer and death. That's why we have environmental impact studies now.

Re: New York becomes the first state to impose a data center moratorium

#156

Post by bilbo0s »

ianm218 wrote: post #123
ASinclair wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would people move to jurisdictions that are building AI datacenters? It seems like people would move away from them.

People move towards places with growing economic opportunities. New York heavily restricts construction and infrastructure projects of all kinds. The tech and finance elite will stay here but normal people who are trying to make a decent living in construction and similar trades will end up following opportunities. NYC population is declining after all [1] largely because the city would rather treat housing as a scar…

People move towards places with growing economic opportunities.

I hope people aren't expecting data centers to provide "growing economic opportunities". That's not really what data centers are about.

Data centers are infrastructure in the same way nuclear plants or canals are infrastructure. Water infrastructure carries the Colorado to Phoenix and other areas in the West. Unfortunately, this does little for people in Colorado. The idea is that the benefit of feeding water to people throughout the west is worth the cost of building and maintaining extensive water infrastructure.

AI infrastructure should be thought of in the same manner. If you're going to have a requirement that data centers provide all these jobs in the places they're built, then data centers are never going to be able to get out from under the PR hammer. And most citizens are going to continue to be disappointed. Because they're thinking about it wrong.

Re: New York becomes the first state to impose a data center moratorium

#157

Post by bb86754 »

int32_64 wrote: post #135
bb86754 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"totalitarian" for a democratically elected representative government to ban something? How? If other counties or states want them fine, godspeed, take them. We'll be just fine without them. - Lifetime resident of what might as well be called AWS us-east-1, Virginia now.

The regional AI policies can be fully democratic, but banning AI data center construction globally would require coordination that only a totalitarian undemocratic one world government could achieve. Many economically stagnant areas actually see it as an incredible economic opportunity when Americans want to destroy their lead in AI, because they can capture business investment that would be reliably American. Crushi…

Where did anyone say a global ban or even national? I personally do not see it as "an incredible economic opportunity," I see it as a massive gamble that won't bear fruit, but that's beside the point. If localities want to bet on them fine, they can have them like I originally said.

Re: New York becomes the first state to impose a data center moratorium

#158

Post by qntmfred »

pembrook wrote: post #141
whartung wrote: post #97

How are (can) datacenters be taxed? Mind, I don't know, but normally you put in a business, or factory, etc. the state can tax the economic output of the factory. The factory builds things, sells things, they tax the sales of those things. Local employees get salaries that can be taxed, etc. Of course, property taxes on the land and improvements. But how does that work with a datacenter? If I pay $5 for an EC2 instan…

The factory comparison is a moot point. This isn't about taxation. Do you think the people hysterically screaming about a data center being built within a 500 mile radius of them would be okay with you building something that uses even more energy/resources like an actual factory? We don't need unique taxation regimes for datacenters...they've existed as a concept for 70-80 years and are not novel in terms of their e…

> The solution to a fundamental lack of meaning in secular modernity will not come via taxation

Well we better figure out where it ought to come from then. Maybe AI can help us explore the latent space.

Re: New York becomes the first state to impose a data center moratorium

#159

Post by overfeed »

ianm218 wrote: post #117

I live in NYC and think the politics in the city and state have been a disaster for middle class people and see this as a continuation of that. The electricity is expensive basically due to the state, so we have to block economically productive projects like data centers because we made our resources artificially scarce. I.e. Indian Point 2 GW Nuclear Site was shut down in 2021, replaced by Natural gas. And then we p…

> I see this as a continuation of that

You may have to explain how middle class would have benefited from the data centers. It's not clear to me at all how the moratorium is "a disaster" for the middle class.

Re: New York becomes the first state to impose a data center moratorium

#160

Post by BigTTYGothGF »

pembrook wrote: post #102
measurablefunc wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to Google, Texas currently has about 87GW of peak capacity & a data center production pipeline that will require 75-100GW. So the state will have to basically double its peak capacity to supply power to all those new data centers.

And they will, because Texas allows building. Question, how do you think the entire infrastructure around you that you’ve taken for granted your whole life was built? If you were asked, would you have voted to allow the building of your own home, the infrastructure and roads around it, and the businesses whose tax revenue funds your local municipality you suddenly are so concerned about? One of the most bizarre contr…

> If you were asked, would you have voted to allow the building of your own home, the infrastructure and roads around it, and the businesses whose tax revenue funds your local municipality you suddenly are so concerned about?

My town isn't perfect in those terms but it's probably about as good as possible, so yes I would have. Of all the places I've lived, tho, there's certainly lots of thing I would have opposed, given the chance, like all those highways.

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