[thewillowcat]

I can tell you, based on local examples, that politicians are setting up deals to bring in data centers without trying to build community support first. Not only that, they are often signing NDAs that prohibit them from telling voters what they have agreed to. It's no way to operate in a democracy, and voters are right to be angry.

[ozim]

I was living in a touristic area.

Guess what was happening, local politicians were treating long term residents as trash in the face of big hotels/apartments who had loads of money.

Fun part was that those apartments/hotels wouldn’t hire locals but rather people who would drive like 20-30 km away.

Bad deal all way round for locals but of course local government people would pocket their share one way or the other if not from outright bribery.

[TurdF3rguson]

You live in a touristy area because you have a tourism-related job, right?

Because where are the tourists supposed to stay if there's no hotels?

[watwut]

Or, he did something else and mived away, vecause this sucked.

There is never shortage of hotels. They pop up is actual econony supports it. No reason to take bribes

[adamsb6]

I’m a voter who prefers we establish rules that be followed rather than encumber every project with a lengthy community dialogue.

[starik36]

That's it right there. Rules, not deals.

[ghaff]

The two are often difficult to dissociate. My town had a fairly fractious town meeting around a rezoning proposal that was mostly for a fairly specific commercial purpose--that passed through a basically procedural mechanism in a second meeting.

[anthonypasq]

> I can tell you, based on local examples, that politicians are setting up deals to bring in data centers without trying to build community support first. Not only that, they are often signing NDAs that prohibit them from telling voters what they have agreed to. It's no way to operate in a democracy, and voters are right to be angry.

People believing they are entitled to dictate what other people do with their property, or believing they should have some say in the "character" of their neighborhood that involves non-public land just doesnt make any sense to me.

Why do people think that because they have a house somewhere they should get the ability to freeze an entire town in time and disallow anyone to build anything. Seriously, where did this mindset come from?

[kokanee]

So many of these conversations come back to the problem of privatized gains and socialized losses.

Most things that create value have externalities. I kill the moss on my roof, then it rains and the chemicals go into the stream, then you try to go fishing and get skunked. I exerted my freedom as a private property owner and got the benefits; you paid for the drawbacks. We're all pulling from the same pile of resources, and the Earth doesn't care where your picket fence is.

Data centers incur expensive externalities and you're asking the general public to bear those costs -- or "pay those taxes," if that resonates more. I suppose NIMBYism is part of it, but we're not talking about ugly condos here, we're talking about towns running out of electricity: https://fortune.com/2026/05/12/lake-tahoe-data-center-49000-....

[rescripting]

This may come as a surprise to you, but people like living in pleasant surroundings.

Just because I own the land does not mean I can open an abattoir next to an elementary school.

Using land in different ways results in externalities that affect those around it.

The people of a community should have some right to protect themselves from those externalities. How that happens in practice is a deeply flawed, messy, ugly process, but collectively deciding where to draw the line is part of living together as a community.

[_doctor_love]

Your argument makes sense until you have a horrible neighbor. You can see it in action in a state like Montana which to my knowledge prohibits housing covenants. Want to park 12 cars that are rusting in your front yard? Do it! Neighbors can't do anything about it. But that does have the effect of lowering property value and degrading the neighborhood.

[jyounker]

> People believing they are entitled to dictate what other people do with their property, or believing they should have some say in the "character" of their neighborhood that involves non-public land just doesnt make any sense to me.

Would you like me to buy the lot next to your house and set up a 3000W sound system pumping noise music 24 hours directly at your bedroom? Because that's what you're arguing for.

[irishcoffee]

Generally the law concerning this is called: “disturbing the peace” and is not tolerated.

[singleshot_]

> People believing they are entitled to dictate what other people do with their property

Yes, I believe that’s called “society” and while we are all very disappointed about your personal liberties I’m afraid some compromises had to be made to allow people other than you to have property rights too.

[mattmatheus]

NIMBYism has been popular for a long time. People really do want datacenters (or at least, the things that having datacenters enable).. they just want them somewhere else.

[vkou]

I'm not sure anyone but investors chasing yield feel a very strong need to see the planet covered in AI data centers, especially when the benefits seem to be rolling up, not down.

[jvanderbot]

Strong private property rights have to come with some protections against others' externalities - otherwise your property is harmed.

[vkou]

> People believing they are entitled to dictate what other people do with their property

If the data center existed in a vaccum, with no inputs or outputs, this argument would hold some weight.

Instead, they stress limited water supplies, cause power shortages, increase GHG emissions (which we, the public ultimately have to pay for, either through mitigation or dealing with the damage after the fact).

Oh, and also they may well have negative externalities to employment. They definitely have negative externalities to communication, the internet has been flooded with AIshit.

[ajross]

> People believing they are entitled to dictate what other people do with their property, or believing they should have some say in the "character" of their neighborhood

So... iron smeltery next door for you then? Acid rain?

Come on. There is reasonable concern for property rights and civil coexistence and then there's Randian Libertarian Claptrap, and you've hopped right into the deep end.

YES, government has a clear and obvious interest, as a matter of principle, in the regulation of land use and development. This doesn't change just because you think the government made a wrong decision in a particular instance. The solution is to fix the government. Go vote for datacenter candidates. Seems like no one else is.

[nobodyandproud]

Are those NDAs enforceable? That’s a major governance gap and problem if so.

[enoint]

Some information is legally required for them to disclose, if they’re acting in their official capacity. I feel like development on public land is too big to hide.

[logicchains]

Voters also have a right not to be misinformed by Chinese government propaganda: https://openai.com/index/prc-linked-influence-operations-ai-...

[pesus]

OpenAI isn't a convincing source. Of course they're going to blame everything on someone else. They don't want to acknowledge the very real hate for AI that people have. It's also extremely likely that they themselves are involved in the very same thing but to push AI instead.

[overfeed]

Do you consider the American fight for Civil rights to have been motivated by Nazi (or Soviet) propaganda? Would one's opposition to the Nazis preclude them from supporting Civil Rights based on some truth exploited by Nazi propagandist?

1. https://perspectives.ushmm.org/item/german-leaflet-for-black...

[colechristensen]

And on the other side this is the foreign adversarial way to hinder US AI progress, develop and encourage anti-datacenter sentiment which this kind of secrecy and antidemocratic behavior plays right into.

[mrtesthah]

Is it really a matter of "national security" when the technology at hand is being used in a way that unilaterally benefits a small class of oligarchs at the expense of the rest of society? That's not really in the benefit of the nation anymore, is it?

[AnimalMuppet]

Depends on what you think "the nation" is. Is it the "regular people"? Or is it the elite? (And whichever you think it is, and no matter how obvious you think it is, there are people who think it is obviously the opposite.)

[svachalek]

There's practically nothing you can get 100% agreement on, and yet we can still find that there is a right answer.

[esikich]

I don't understand why people think they should be able to vote on things like this. Especially when they lack the necessary credentials to have an informed opinion on it.

[sanid]

So what are the topics people should be able to vote on? I don't think people have the necessary credentials to vote on immigration, drug price regulation, social media regulation? Why let people vote at all, they don't know anything apparently.

[_doctor_love]

I mean, why do we let people without property vote in the first place? It's really only people with a vested interest who have something at stake.