this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2025
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A Boring Dystopia
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People should be angry and upset about this. Similar to the story some weeks ago where residents of a small Texan town (seemingly rightfully at first) complained about the noise pollution of a Bitcoin mining farm. Turns out they all voted Republican. It's always "we'll deregulate and bring business" just that the modern businesses they bring are a net negative for the area except for the politicians and the companies. Is almost like these regulations were there for a reason.
Both Bitcoin and AI are stupid VC money that only matters in a very small bubble, and they're not business in a traditional sense. They just leech resources at their compute centers to make the people who own them and live far away rich. I pity all this who didn't vote for this kind of bullshit. The rest, enjoy your shorter showers and everything else! But remember, it's the Dems who want to dictate stuff like water usage. Not in my free country! Oh, the water is gone because a greedy Corp stole it? That's fine, one day it's my turn to be rich.
You could consider it an extractive industry like mineral mining. In this case the electricity and water are turned into profit. It creates some short term local jobs like construction, but the system administrators are likely hired from elsewhere. The R&D is likely being done elsewhere as well. Most of the money these businesses spend goes straight to Nvidia and the profit goes straight to a small group of executives and investors.
At least mining did create some local jobs, though I do think that the area itself loses out because it's a finite resource and the environmental impact is always there. And as you said, these modern examples don't really require a big local workforce. It doesn't stimulate the local economy a bit.
Presumably they also pay some taxes, although it sounds like may of these places set up in unincorporated areas to avoid such things.
Often the municipalities will offer tax breaks in order for the mega corps to set up shop in their town, so they often don’t pay taxes.