Why Americans Hate Data Centers
It's the big downsides and the few obvious upsides, stupid.
A new Gallup poll confirms that most Americans hate the prospect of data centers coming to their communities. This revelation has been met with some anger among the tech crowd and its Extremely Online Fans, but the opposition is entirely predictable for a few reasons worth reviewing, even if they are obvious.
People don’t generally like the idea of living near industrial facilities that create a lot of noise pollution, and data centers can create a lot of noise pollution.
People don’t generally like the idea of seeing their residential electricity and water rates rise, and there is the perception - and some evidence - that data centers are linked to those price increases.
People don’t generally like the idea of artificial intelligence systems powering predatory pricing schemes, ruining the education system, and creating a panopticon — and data centers are the engines of those dystopias.
People don’t generally like the idea of giving tech companies billions of dollars of special tax breaks that could prompt higher taxes on everyone else — all to further enrich the tech oligarchs creating these dystopias.
After the Gallup poll was released, one Twitter-prominent economist lamented that “people are mad about data centers, they’re mad about warehouses. Boy if neoliberalism hadn’t killed all the factories people would be mad about them too.”
But that smug comment ignores the additional political problem for data center advocates.
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