One of America's greatest strengths is the structure of it as a federation. It allows for states like this to take the lead in expanding datacenter infrastructure while other states can choose to shutdown such expansions. This was perhaps more significant in COVID-19 reactions in America, but datacenters have few such externalities and so this is an even more compelling example of variation between states.

The scaling of federal power with population is also significant as states like Texas that allow for more housing to be built will probably receive more seats at the next apportionment while states like California will lose seats. Overall, pretty neat to see the design of America work quite well like this.

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cortesoft 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I generally agree with this idea, but

> but datacenters have few such externalities

Is wild. Energy consumption is one of the biggest externalities that exists today, since global climate change is completely independent of location. Greenhouse gases do not care about borders.

	▲	tadfisher 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Also wild when Musk is freebasing methane in Tennessee with zero consequences.

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PaulDavisThe1st 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

While it is not a true "externality", data center use of water is a strong community/regional cost that effectively removes 1 person/1 vote. Those with the financial resources to buy more water get the water, those without do not.

Perhaps you think that the distribution of financial resources reflects what is in society's best interests - that Meta, Google et al. have demonstrated their utility in ways that make them literally more important than people with insufficient wealth to outbid those companies for water.

Many of us do not.

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terminalshort an hour ago | parent | next [-]

What fictional universe do you live in where people are not getting water because they have been outbid by some data center? As for commercial use of water, we absolutely should do it that way instead of the archaic water rights system we have now.

	▲	PaulDavisThe1st 21 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		It's not a fictional universe. It is precisely the waters rights system you've mentioned. Capital-rich entity buys water senior water rights, extracts water, others find their wells descending/drying. This hasn't happened yet in New Mexico with a data center because these are new. But it has happened numerous times with other capital-rich entities that have bought water rights (sometimes, just cities buying rights from adjacent rural county land). A small community near where I live no longer has functioning wells because new residential construction below them sucked the water out of the aquifer. They tried to drill deeper, without much success. County is now having to build a water line to the community.

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polski-g 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

"Datacenter water usage" is a comment I'd expect to see on Reddit--not a VC forum with allegedly intelligent people.

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PaulDavisThe1st 3 hours ago | parent [-]

I live in New Mexico. I do not consider Hacker News to be a VC forum. For what it's worth (which is very little), I was employee #2 at amzn if I need some sort of credentials to get you to respond constructively to my point rather than with some hand-wavey ad hominem.

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terminalshort an hour ago | parent [-]

> For what it's worth (which is very little), I was employee #2 at amzn

Reminds me of a quote from some otherwise forgettable movie I saw: "My father left me with very little, except for all his money."

	▲	PaulDavisThe1st an hour ago \| parent [-]
		By "worth" in this context, I mean "authority to speak in a context claimed to be limited to a certain kind of person" (a limitation I do not acknowledge exists on HN, or anywhere, really). For the record, my net worth increased by about $1M before taxes based on the 1 year of options I got at amzn. But not relevant in this context.