For people who don't support this kind of ban, I'd ask: What's the alternative? _Requiring_ that states house data centers?

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cloudfudge 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

In what universe is requiring them the only alternative to banning them? The actual alternative is obvious: not banning them.

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xphos 3 hours ago | parent [-]

The consequence of saying they cannot choice to not have them. Is saying your requiring them to have them whether or not the people their want them. Its also a temporary moratorium. Maybe the industry should have been more responsible and not pasted so many externalities on to the public sector if they didnt want to face regulations.

I think the highest parent comment basically hasn't engaged in any of the cost benefit analysis just strawman the subject to banning all industry. They are not doing that and allow other manufacturing to exist maybe the data center business should learn from those industries how to conduct themselves

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cloudfudge 2 hours ago | parent [-]

> The consequence of saying they cannot choice to not have them. Is saying your requiring them to have them whether or not the people their want them.

Sorry, but this is nonsense. They are currently not banned in Maine, yet they do not have them. There is obviously no requirement to have them.

	▲	fc417fc802 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Being against a ban is equivalent to requiring that something be allowed. It might or might not end up happening, but either way it is permitted.

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strongpigeon 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Taxing them to account for the externalities they bring.

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kube-system 44 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Usually that's a good approach but it doesn't work as well for industries that are in boom-bust cycles or have externalities which persist longer than the lifetime of the company that caused it -- because you either end up in a situation where you have to tax it all up-front, or end up in a situation where companies disappear and leave you to clean up their mess.

This is notoriously problematic with oil and gas wells. When it's profitable, they're maintained and you get tax revenue. When they're not profitable, the company might just disappear and you're left with an abandoned uncapped well spewing pollution, generating zero tax revenue.

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rangerelf 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

This right here is the right take.

	▲	trollbridge an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Might have the effect of making it uneconomic, though, and then they wouldn't get built.

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chao- 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I see no need for a false dichotomy of "require" vs "ban". There aren't laws requiring a state to have lumber mills, or outright banning them. There are many alternatives with a wide spectrum of attributes:

- Limiting the rates of builds allowed (e.g. total area per year, density per area per year).

- Requiring that the companies involved offset their resource usage in any number of ways (could expand this to three paragraphs on its own).

- Placing restrictions on proximity to $THINGS, whether that's residential areas, parks, you name it.

These are just the first three examples that come to mind, and I am confident that people smarter than me could come up with more.

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inglor_cz 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

In free societies, bans should be the last weapon of choice. By default, any activity should be allowed, many of the allowed activies should be regulated and/or taxed, but outright bans should be very well justified.

Otherwise you will end up with a chaotic-authoritarian system banning whatever the current Zeitgeist feels icky about, which in the era of social networks means twenty different things each year.

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petre 3 hours ago | parent [-]

It's a free state. Like the Swiss banned minarets in Geneva the Mainers should be allowed to vote to ban datacenters. AI bros can always opt to build their stuff elsewhere, like Texas or Abu Dhabi.

	▲	tt24 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		That’s not what a free society is. That’s like saying “Mainers should be allowed to ban speech they don’t like, and private sex acts they find offensive”. Your view of what constitutes freedom is nonsensical.