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by ElevenLathe 186 days ago
I say they're wrong, and I do so in my capacity as a citizen. These large pools of capital should not be allowed to follow the whims of a handful of unelected oligarchs who have clearly lost the plot. In a functioning society, this scale of decision would not be left to the whims of international finance capital, but decided via democratic means. It's unfortunate that the last scraps of the Fordist labor truce are unraveling, because it means that I and my comrades are going to have to discipline this generation of oligarchs just like our grandparents did the last really nasty one.
1 comments

So, would you say that the money being invested in data centers belongs to the voters?
I would say it should belong to voters (or "society", or "the people", or whatever formula you want to use to express it), in a functioning society. Unfortunately, we're not in a functioning society, and it doesn't. On the other hand, property is socially constructed, so this political economy can be changed, though how exactly is left as an exercise to the reader -- I don't a foolproof answer.
Let me guess: you do not have any significant savings and do not anticipate accumulating any.
I have savings, sure. I need them, because in the current system the alternative is to starve in the street if anything at all goes wrong with my employment, my health, etc. Many others are not so lucky. If you mean this to be a "gotcha" because I wouldn't want my savings "confiscated" to build roads and bridges, then save it. There is a difference between 1) taxing billionaires so that they're merely hundreds of times richer than the average citizen, and 2) stealing my retirement savings and emergency fund without providing any equivalent public safety net.