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Maine is about to become the first state to ban major new data centers

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Re: Maine is about to become the first state to ban major new data centers

#451

Post by JuniperMesos »

culi wrote: post #450
JuniperMesos wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you think the EPA is "a council of elders"? Yes

What about the Department of Energy or Department of Education or Department of Commerce? Why not just do away with government in general. Let corporations do what they want

Yeah I think in a lot of cases getting rid of a government bureaucracy and replacing it with nothing would result in better outcomes for more people than continuing to let the government bureaucracy continue to exist and work counterproductively against good market outcomes because those good market outcomes impact a special interest group that's been able to gain poltical control of that bureaucracy. This is exactly what has happened with the Department of Education and it's a good reason why the Department of Education should be abolished (I'd go even further and abolish local public schools, privatizing all K-12 education)

Re: Maine is about to become the first state to ban major new data centers

#452

Post by rockemsockem »

dymk wrote: post #446
rockemsockem wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Are you actually being serious? Look at the last 60 years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DRAM_price_fixing_scandal

Cool, one blip.

https://wiki.aiimpacts.org/ai_timelines/hardware_and_ai_time...

Re: Maine is about to become the first state to ban major new data centers

#453

Post by pj_mukh »

culi wrote: post #322
pj_mukh wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Appointing a council of elders who will think through every imagined horror before approving a project (or a “framework”) is basically the textbook definition of NIMBY-ism. Every NIMBY thinks they’re being optimally thoughtful (tm), except the answer is always the same, two years of environment studies, followed by a loud resounding “No”. Why would they approve anything? They have no incentive to.

Do you think the EPA is "a council of elders"? C'mon. Be reasonable for a second. Or at the very least actually read past the title before commenting. This is actively seeking to reduce NIMBYism > As part of the moratorium, Maine’s Data Center Coordination Council would study and oversee the environmental impact and electricity bill increases datacenters often bring to local residents and “consider data-sharing requi…

The EPA comparison is moot. Data centers don’t dump chemicals into the water or emit toxic gasses. A data center is not more or less resource intensive than your typical factory. All already regulated.

What you’re asking for is an EPA for “do I approve of what this data center is used for?”. Which is insane.

Re: Maine is about to become the first state to ban major new data centers

#454

Post by Bratmon »

throwaway27448 wrote: post #433
Bratmon wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Data centers don't really help the material conditions of Mainers though. Here's the net effects of new data centers they'll really see, in material terms: - A brief boost in construction jobs - ~0 new jobs in the long term - Increased electricity prices - A slight chance of very slightly lower taxes, as data center taxes partially replace taxes on other stuff It's not like the average Mainer is losing a lot from thi…

> Data centers don't really help the material conditions of Mainers though. No, but solar and wind farms certainly do.

Not if 100% of their power is being used to power data centers

Re: Maine is about to become the first state to ban major new data centers

#455

Post by tt24 »

culi wrote: post #445
tt24 wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"We need to put a """temporary""" moratorium to infringe on your right to $thing until we figure out what the hell is going on" No thanks

Some people are addicted to the taste of boots. In most of the US, small cities are being bullied around by huge tech firms that have taken over their political infrastructure and bought out their politicians. The people of Maine are sticking up to bid-rigging, bribery, and political collusion. More power to them They're not even the first. Kentucky is facing fallout from uncovered collusion between local officials a…

> In most of the US, small cities are being bullied around by huge tech firms that have taken over their political infrastructure and bought out their politicians.

You have evidence for this claim?

Re: Maine is about to become the first state to ban major new data centers

#456

Post by order-matters »

BeetleB wrote: post #254
order-matters wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The entire point though is that they won't get built where they are taxed I dont think this is entirely true. Maybe not the first wave of data centers, but there are a lot of factors that go into the cost calc and its possible that it would still be worth it to build them even if taxed.

He's not saying it's economically unfeasible to build where taxed. He's saying they'll simply build elsewhere where they won't be taxed. About a decade ago, a bunch of data center companies got fantastic deals with my city (low/no tax). People are pretty upset about it. A few years in there was a report on how many people they employeed. I think combined it was under 10 who lived in the area.

im saying it would not only be economically feasible but economically optimal. power generation and reliability is an important factor. Even just the cost of electric varies, and might change after a data center is put in. in the case they need to provide their own power, you now have all the costs associated with power generation in that area too.

there are real competitive differences to locations and the best locations will likely be able to afford to tax. lets say they all go solar power, then places that are good for solar and it doesnt snow or have as many cloudy days relative to other places will be able to tax more than other places and possibly still have it be the most economical choice.

They also cant build them all in the same spot or move them that easily after they are built. It might be smarter to agree to be taxed and have an amicable relationship with the community you build the data center in rather than risk them changing the law after its already built because youre screwing them over.

Re: Maine is about to become the first state to ban major new data centers

#457

Post by xphos »

tjohns wrote: post #182
xphos wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bad dichotomy they aren't saying no to data centers to spite them. They are saying no because that data centers are a major public drain and net negative on public resources. Often they don't pay high taxes nor do they employ large numbers of people. Most of the money made by leeching of public power infrastructure and cheap electricity and export the profits to somewhere else. They are building and selling a non tan…

> Often they don't pay high taxes nor do they employ large numbers of people... They are building and selling a non tangible good i.e where do you tax it? You could easily charge a property tax (could even have a higher rate for data centers, specifically), or an excise tax on number of servers, or a tax on excess energy/water consumption. There's lots of options here, if that's what you're worried about. > Their is…

Yeah but the data centers write contracts that making changing the laws around property contractually impossible if you don't argree to their hostile terms they just move to the next town willing to accept. Towns are not a necessiarly smart enough to do all contractual footwork especially when companies heavily lobby the towns population with empty promises. But even if they do the best thing that happens is the company moves to a more willing town. Most data centers are build in poor places because those towns are looking for something to change their circumstances.

Also I am not saying factories are all good they pump stuff like TEFLON in rivers but at least the people locally get a good job out of it. And they make those trades even when the negative impacts exceed the positive gains like with data centers. Its from position of depressed town where the people want to see the golden days return.

Also this is a deal with negatives and positives you haven't listed a positive for these data centers in your reply I think is indicitive that you haven't explored the effect of data centers in places like Louisiana which is very permisive.

I think just saying maybe towns should do better laws doesn't recognize the power differential between a town and likely a poor town and a Trillion dollar corportations. Idea's like an excise tax like that is way more complex than you are thinking does a server excise tax effect just these data centers or anyone doing data center processing i.e local hospitals. The Law is very complex when it comes to inventing new taxes but yeah some of those things should be investigated it might be a good case to have a pause to study those proposals and implement them so that towns don't just get screwed over. And I am not saying there isn't a dynamic in which data centers can help local communities its just that has not been the case for more data centers than the public is potentially willing to tolerate. Make the economics better for people and I am sure governments would not stand in the way its just at this point their is little effort to do so.

Re: Maine is about to become the first state to ban major new data centers

#458

Post by xphos »

fc417fc802 wrote: post #270
tjohns wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Often they don't pay high taxes nor do they employ large numbers of people... They are building and selling a non tangible good i.e where do you tax it? You could easily charge a property tax (could even have a higher rate for data centers, specifically), or an excise tax on number of servers, or a tax on excess energy/water consumption. There's lots of options here, if that's what you're worried about. > Their is…

> an excise tax on number of servers We need to go full Oracle and charge an excise tax per logical CPU core. For GPUs we can count SIMT lanes. More seriously they should be taxed per watt, likely in an asymptotic manner because most of the externalities don't scale linearly. Any additional infrastructure requirements should be directly rolled into their electric and water bills, which is to say that they should rece…

I mean yeah it think their are some ideas around how to tax things better and rolling up the real infrastructure and resource costs. All these things can be done but the conversation above has that as the last thought which is what many towns that get destroyed by data-centers do. They job to conclusions about these things being universially good or making jobs but dont' engage with the reality of the math that goes into that decisions. Whether towns can do that hard to say but I believe the state government has an obligation to aid its local governments and stake holders i.e people to not get ripped off and forced in to terrible contracts that hurt the states long term

Re: Maine is about to become the first state to ban major new data centers

#459

Post by xphos »

toast0 wrote: post #403
xphos wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Local municipalities collect this and often get tricked into not collecting it via agreements to host it in or near their town for multiple year agreements. Also the assessed value of the property may not come anywhere near the costs of increased electricity demand, water usage and noise pollution problems. For locals Their is typically high paying jobs in factories but these places dont employ a large staff beyond c…

Property tax is often assessed on capital equipment owned by a business as well as real estate. So while the real estate may be of limited value, the hosted machines could drive significant tax revenue as AI machines are spendy. You're right though, that municipalities often waive taxes to woo big projects.

Yeah but i think server farms are tricky to access because they have accountants to argue about depreciating CPUs, second hand CPU deppreication is enormous so its possible to wiggle the numbers down. Not to zero but the challenge is that you have to recoup not just hthe land value but the value related all the infrastructure and resource drain this type of business does which is very non-trivial

Re: Maine is about to become the first state to ban major new data centers

#460

Post by DrewADesign »

will4274 wrote: post #395
DrewADesign wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So maybe someone can open a new sandwich shop and accomplish the same thing without screwing everybody else in the process. Not only that, Lewiston probably doesn’t have a glut of data center talent seeking employment —I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that not a single person living in Lewiston when a project like that was approved would be employed there.

The data center jobs are middle class. With progressive taxation, those 30 middle class jobs generate about 100 average people's worth of revenue. Presumably Lewiston has schools which could use the funds. And presumably everybody in Lewiston already has lunch somewhere, so a new sandwich shop that was successful would put another lunch spot out of business, for a net zero jobs. Edit: the larger point here is that jo…

Nobody that lives in Lewiston will get those jobs, and the people that get those jobs will almost certainly live in more upscale places nearby.

Tack a new building that size onto Bath Ironworks? That’s a huge boon. Heck even an Amazon warehouse would be an improvement. But a data center? For the people in Lewiston, it would be far more of a negative than a positive — and that’s the way it works in this country. We value money over people. If private equity, venture capitalists or huge corporations want something that you don’t want, you lose. Getting a policy win is a rarity and I’d be surprised if it didn’t get successfully challenged in court.

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