alt Hacker NewsOn the one hand, the wishes of a donor should be respected to some degree. On the other hand, the government should be allowed to make the best use of land in its jurisdiction for the people who live there today, since “The earth belongs in usufruct to the living” and we should “preserve the soil of the country from being daily more & more absorbed in Mortmain” as Thomas Jefferson might say. Our land should not be bound forever by the preferences of the dead.
And I am concerned that the purpose of slanted anti-datacenter coverage by the likes of 404media.co and perfectunion.us is to inspire memetic NIMBYism that has and will cause tremendous damage to the US.
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I disagree with you in principle. I think a town that accepts a donation of land for a specific purpose should be as bound as anyone else to the terms of the deed.
In practical terms, it’s not clear that an entity with the power of imminent domain can meaningfully be constrained by deeds.
If you can't trust your deeds to be respected then no rational actor would donate land. Instead the farmer would just have kept it.
> Our land should not be bound forever by the preferences of the dead.
This only came up because living people also care about it.
If you want to make it illegal to dictate how land is used, do so directly. I'd be fine with the state passing a new law, voted on by the people, stripping such deeds of their status. But until then, it doesn't seem good at all to ignore an existing law at the whims of local government.
And of course, at that point, don't be surprised when the people keep voting to toss data centers out - if individuals can't be expected to dictate what happens to their land, neither should corporations.