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by vitally3643 19 days ago
Datacenters don't create jobs and drain local resources.

It takes a couple dozen people to fully staff a datacenter. That's literally a rounding error in employment statistics.

Framing it as an argument against American manufacturing or jobs is complete nonsense.

2 comments

> Datacenters don't create jobs and drain local resources.

Recap

    DATACENTERS DON'T CREATE JOBS

    DATACENTERS DRAIN LOCAL RESOURCES

    DATACENTERS DRIVE UP PRICES Of CRITICAL COMPONENTS 5-FOLD

    [there are countless more lines but you get the idea]
Datacenters are the greatest epic tragedy since car culture/trespassing culture mass-murdered childhood.
>Framing it as an argument against American manufacturing or jobs is complete nonsense.

It is a strong argument against those things in at least three ways: (1) if you want to mandate that high tech manufacturing come back to America (e.g. "just make iPhones here" which seems to be a common sentiment in my circles), it would be foolish to suppress an industry creating insatiable demand for high tech components and ensuring that it goes offshore at a time when other countries are also trying to build more local manufacturing. To say nothing of components and construction materials that are already manufactured here. (2) there are very few types of industry that would create less local environmental impact than a data center, no chance if you think data centers use too much water you'd be okay with the toxic chemicals that chip fabs work with. (3) since America is a high wage country with a lot of R&D strength, any factories we build are naturally going to be much more automated than they are in low wage countries. Being against entire industries because individual facilities don't create enough jobs would probably be quite limiting in the types of manufacturing you'd approve of as well.