[Grombobulous]

Political approval is the basis of societal consent. A whole lot of things are allowed/disallowed based on political approval.

Zoning laws, noise ordinances, toxic waste disposal, food safety standards, etc.

I can't run a frozen lasagna factory from my house. It's illegal. I don't have political approval.

If the people do not approve of data centers, they don't get built. Simple as that. Businesses do not have an inherent right to exist. Businesses are granted their existence and places of operation by the state and local municipalities that license them.

[Schiendelman]

Unfortunately, we've hamstrung ourselves by saying it's illegal to build more apartments in most of the places people want to live...

[Karrot_Kream]

You're right. Of course political approval tends to involve a few more people than a couple dissenting commenters on a ratioed HN comment thread, depending on the regime in question. Pretty sure the entities in question had business licenses as well.

[fc417fc802]

> Of course political approval tends to involve a few more people than a couple dissenting commenters

You mean such as the broad nationwide concern regarding data center construction in recent months? A large portion of the population expressing concern and alarm that the bureaucratic processes involved don't adequately represent their stake in the matter? That sort of political (dis)approval?

[Karrot_Kream]

See this kind of response is why online discussions of the topic become so silly. What is "broad nationwide"? What is "large portion"? How large should a "large portion" be? We have a history of blocking housing because of local opposition, should we use the same model to block datacenters? How much "stake" should they have in the matter? These are all hard questions and I'm not sure a comment section and polarized social media communities are the right place to think about them.

This is a complicated issue. Datacenters don't just depend on energy, they also generate noise, use water, but also generate some jobs and have fewer of the externalities (such as big trucks that load and unload regularly, and less water usage, no chemical usage, etc) that come with the usual light industrial uses. Most of these comments are just ways for people to vent and at best confuse the issue and at worst set them back, IMO at least.

My comment in this chain was glib but it was responding to a comment whose purpose was to vent or express disapproval, so I don't think I brought the conversation down. That didn't stop me from picking up downvotes of course.

[fc417fc802]

I agree with you that it's a complex issue but I'm not sure that's particularly relevant to the immediate exchange. The topic wasn't whether or not the thing enjoys or ought to enjoy broad political approval, nor was it what mechanism would be best to use to determine political approval.

You appeared to be suggesting that there is something wrong with political approval (however that's determined) being required for something to move forward. It was pointed out (correctly I believe) that political approval broadly refers to the process by which we arrive at societal consent.

At that point you tried to dismiss the broader situation as "a couple dissenting commenters" but that is very clearly not an accurate description of things. These buildouts have been receiving scrutiny and often refusal across the US for some time now. You might well disagree with what you see happening, believe the populace to be misinformed or senselessly jumping on a bandwagon, believe the overarching political process to be flawed, or whatever else. But none of that stands counter to the reality that there is currently broad community pushback across the US and that it is indeed the associated political processes that determine what is and isn't allowed. The populace is well within its rights to deny the construction of datacenters regardless of if such an outcome is a wise course of action.

[Karrot_Kream]

> These buildouts have been receiving scrutiny and often refusal across the US for some time now.

Yes but the crux of your reading of my comment is you think I'm trying to downplay the opposition to buildouts. Do you know how much opposition there actually is? Is it geographically concentrated? Is it demographically concentrated?

What I've seen is the usual tech skeptical online publications have made a big deal about this issue, the usual pro tech sources say nothing about it. Anti tech politicians have run photo ops in anti tech publications, and pro tech politicians have done the same. Big newspapers like the NYT have run the occasional article about opposition but have largely left the issue alone.

> But none of that stands counter to the reality that there is currently broad community pushback across the US and that it is indeed the associated political processes that determine what is and isn't allowed. The populace is well within its rights to deny the construction of datacenters regardless of if such an outcome is a wise course of action.

Is it broad? Has anyone shown how broad it is? I sure haven't seen a march on DC about it. Before the YIMBY movement organized, this is exactly how housing issues used to be covered on progressive media btw. Protests of 30 people in a community of thousands used to get amplified to galvanize anti-housing support. To some extent this is the job of media, to give editorial voice to sympathetic concerns, but as someone now involved with housing politics I've come to realize that the truth of the scale of opposition to local builds like this can has a lot of incentives around every motivated actor to inflate their support. Community surveys are the only thing I've seen that works and even then advocates will show up to meetings and shout at the opposition claiming that the survey results are rigged.

As far as the "associated political processes" this depends heavily from state to state and county to county. Opponents to UC Berkeley's student housing tried to block housing by claiming humans are noise pollution. This only works because California has CEQA. Residents of Texas could not sue on those grounds.

If you ask me, the fact that we're playing politics to litigate building shows we're lost. We can't leave every piece of infrastructure to the vagaries of the masses. As usual the rich and politically well connected will win and the poor will lose. Building needs to be ministerial.

[fc417fc802]

I think I largely agree with you. Where we differ is that it seems that you're trying to somehow question the scale of the opposition and deligitimize it. Something being "broad" or "widespread" or etc does not mean that it is a majority view or practice. Only a small percentage of the US population owns a pickup truck but IMO it would be entirely unreasonable to claim that ownership of those in the US is not commonplace. If you attempted to outlaw pickups and were met with opposition from all of and only the owners that would qualify as broad opposition as far as I'm concerned.

> Do you know how much opposition there actually is? Is it geographically concentrated? Is it demographically concentrated?

No, no idea, and no idea. But I don't think that actually matters with regards to our point of contention.

Recently there have been many concrete examples of people showing up to raise objections about data centers with their local politicians and regulatory bodies. This has been well documented in the media whether or not a particular outlet such as the NYT has chosen to draw attention to it. The companies themselves point to the permitting process when explaining their own recent behavior. It is thus IMO facetious to question the claim that widespread political opposition exists.

Your housing example illustrates my point perfectly. I completely agree that the situation with zoning and permitting is absurdly dysfunctional and almost entirely to blame for high housing costs. But it is also clear that there is broad opposition to building more housing for one reason or another. You might view the influence of a particular group as outsized. It would not be unreasonable to be of the opinion that the political process gives too much weight to the naysayers and is in need of reform. But when opposition is successfully blocking something across wide swaths of the country then the statement "there is broad political opposition to that in the US" is correct more or less by definition.