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

Post by preg_match » Sun, Jul 19, 2026, 9:20 PM UTC

ianm218 wrote: post #169

overfeed wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

There is huge amounts of construction costs on these things and electrical work as well. The general rule is 50% or more of construction in NYC goes toward labor, so that drives up wages for local talent. Obviously any given project is temporary but it seems like there will be a multi year build out so lots of projects. There is then the secondary effect of skilled labor like machining and manufacturing parts for the…

The job and economy effects drop off a cliff once the DC is actually built. They take remarkably little staff to run, and they certainly don't do much for the local economy. We can tell BECAUSE people are erecting them in the middle of nowhere. There is no local economy, and that works for DC specifically.

I can't erect, say, an Amazon SWE office in the middle of bumfuck nowhere. How will I get:

- Talent for my office? - Food, shelter, and creature conveniences for my workers? - Culture for my workers? - Entertainment and nightlife for my workers? - and on and on

Turns out DCs need like... none of that. Which is why we just put them anywhere, it seems, and we don't build them in downtown Seattle or Manhattan. But we do certainly put offices in Seattle and Manhattan.

Also, while the DC itself takes some local capital to build, both labor and materials, everything inside the DC is imported. We don't use skilled workers to build GPUs for the DC right, we just buy nvidia.

Post by davkan » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 4:17 AM UTC

pj_mukh wrote: post #73

afavour wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are no objective concerns to be met Are you sure? Most of the objections I've seen center around environmental impact and effect on residential energy pricing in the surrounding area. Both of these seem to be to be objectively measurable. > the data centers will be built elsewhere in more politically impoverished states What does "politically impoverished" mean? I'd say more "politically permissive" states wo…

"environmental impact and effect on residential energy pricing" Sooo, how does that change in New York in a year? You've mostly re-inforced my point. And specifically the bill doesn't use any automatic re-enablement criteria, so data centers are basically dead in the state. Realistically, this is a canard, AI scares people and environmental impact is a lever to use to stop it. Ask yourself this: if this was a new For…

Manufacturing plants bring jobs. What benefits do datacenters bring to their communities?

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

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