Comment by gruez
6 months ago
>pit municipalities against one another in a race to the bottom, and typically demand abated taxes and almost never deliver a net positive for where they operate.
If datacenters are net negatives, why would municipalities compete to get them?
Short term they sound good and promising. They are techy and promise quite large employment, and investments sounds big.
The reality is lot worse. Building walls isn't that much investment to local labour. And most of the value is in components that come from somewhere else. After install, they run on handful of guards and techs. Not worst jobs, but general in general any type of factory or even small scale industry would be better.
They're a net negative for the people who live there, not necessarily the business or political class making the decisions. See also football stadiums and the Olympics.