alt Hacker News“Let’s stop all new economic activity as it might have an effect on <insert commodity> prices” is just so juvenile and poorly thought through.
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This is an intellectually dishonest and frankly completely inappropriate attempt to twist someone’s words. HN generally has good standards about acceptable comments and I’m surprised to see this here.
Juvenile? Seems like utility maxing rational actors to me.
If I get a vote about new economic activity, and it makes me personally poorer, I'm going to need a very good argument as to why I should permit it. Or, you know, pay me.
If the data centers hadn't been _quite_ so hostile to absolutely all their critics and instead had simply offered to pay for some local schools or libraries or something, at like 5% of the cost of the data center, this would have gone differently.
Instead Altman says it will destroy the world: https://www.techradar.com/pro/quote-of-the-day-by-sam-altman...
So it's bad for the world according to its proponents, and at the same time, a bad neighbour? Why would anyone not vote against it given those?
I mean, if the new economic activity primarily serves to further enrich the wealthy then ya, that seems like a reasonable stance.
future economic activity is fine;
the questions are 1) who is footing the bill and 2) who is benefiting from that economic activity
if it's not the local community, then why should they agree to it much less pay for some of it
Generally, economic activity is supposed to raise living standards. AI promisses to a.) speed up climate change b.) facilitate surveillance and authoritarian tech bros b.) make people obsolete and unemployable c.) kill us all because reasons.
Datacenter is not bringing more economic activity to the area.
If that new economic activity has lopsided benefits and will never pay off for those negatively impacted by those price increases, then yeah shut it down or regulate it so that the benefits are shared equally by all. Shorter version, if the new economic activity is exploitive of people and their communities, then shut it down hard.
That's a reductive take in the midst of a cost-of-living crisis. Of course people will resist commercial developments that'll increase the cost of one of the most essential resources everyone uses day-to-day for the sake of shareholder value.