Comment by bob001
14 days ago
To me that's not sustainable. It just brings in outside workers, distorts the economy in bad way for locals through increased costs, distorts their daily life in a bad way and then it all goes away leaving a void in its wake. Like the olympics.
The Olympics are seen as a net negative for local economies though because it requires tons of local investment for a temporary payoff so the juice (billions of dollars of infra) isn’t worth the squeeze (a few weeks of high utilization followed by a glut).
For data centers you get a medium term boost to the economy + long term tax revenue. The externalities of data centers are quite low if you don’t put them right in someone’s neighborhood.
This is a weird comment to me. Think about green energy, specifically solar panels and wind farms. Almost by definition, the jobs created are only during installation. (Ok, there is a little bit of long-term maintenance, but a tiny fraction.) Would you say the same about those projects?
It is unavoidable that the modern world needs data centers (how many is open for debate). It is a fact of life that most of the jobs associated with data centers are during the installation, not the ongoing maintenance. Again: Are you trying to say that building any and all data centers is bad for your reasons?
I will give another example: When a company builds a highly automated factory, the same occurs. Inside the factory, there are very few highly skills jobs. Most of them are low skill (moving boxes and refilling automated machines that are cheaper than automating the work). Again: Are you saying that we should not be building these highly automated factories for your reasons?
> It is unavoidable that the modern world needs data centers (how many is open for debate)
You know, I’m currently having drinks with a friend who has no connection to the tech world, and asked him about this line explicitly curious of what he thinks about it. He said “I have no idea why such things would be unavoidable”. And that is the sentiment of the general populace towards AI/DCs and etc.
Your reply is disingenuous.
I assume that you mean that they do not work in the tech world. However, surely they use lots of tech services in their life.
Do they stream film/TV on NetFlix or YouTube? Do they use social media like Facebook or Insagram or TikTok? Does they use email? Do they use WhatsApp or message to chat with friends/family on their mobile phone? Do they have "cloud storage" for their photos? Do they shop online using Amazon? Do they use Google Maps for navigation?
I assume that most adults do at least some of these things. Where does they think the servers run behind the scenes? Simple: In a data center. Now ask your friend to imagine his life without all of those things, because all of them require data centers.
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