alt Hacker NewsWhere? What do you tax? Per request?
They will shuffle most gains around to the place with the lowest taxes. E.g. by internally buying and selling (overpriced) services.
The only realistic tax is coming from the jobs that serve those data centres (builders, maintenance, that little IT staff left for on-site jobs). And those are rather low margin jobs.
Replies
criddell • today at 4:19 PM
Tax per megawatt, decibel, and gallon of water. That would provide incentives to reduce power consumption, noise, and water use.
sbayg • today at 3:24 PM
Don’t forget security guards. These data centers will be a huge target for both thieves and saboteurs. Unless the ai promoters are right that AI will be a great thing for everyone and not at all a source of societal and political strain.
>What do you tax?
Physical infrastructure inputs and negative externalities.
For example: electrical grid strain, water table consumption for cooling, and local pollution/carbon footprints.