I'm not sure why this is relevant:

> This doesn't make sense. The reason Congress is difficult is because of those same powerful people.

Its much easier to put someone who is aligned with your values into a local political position than congress. And its much more likely that your neighbors will vote in a way that aligns with your interests. And you won't get overridden by a congressman from several states away that has different incentives.

Yes, people building data centers can just shop for a new location. But resistance to data centers appears to be pretty correlated with living in communities that are good places to data center, at least anecdotally.

The world I'm looking in is one where citizens pushing back locally has seemed to get at least some measure of success, albeit spotty, whereas attempts to lobby Congress about AI has been screaming into the void. Frankly, I think your position here is completely divorced from what is actually happening in reality.

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godwinson__4-8 5 hours ago | parent [-]

If the reality you believe in is one in which pockets of local resistance to data centers is going to meaningfully derail AI buildout across the country then I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree.

It's a bad idea. The few communities that succeed are still going to suffer the macro consequences of data centers being built in the next town over.

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kentm 5 hours ago | parent [-]

I don't think anyone is expecting to seriously "derail AI" just by preventing data centers from being built in their neighborhood. But they can at least inconvenience the people they see as the perpetrators. If you can't win the fight, and can't walk away, at least you can give your opponent a bloody lip. And who knows, maybe it gets steam and the people in congress who have been actively ignoring them have incentives to at least throw them a bone.

If there were serious macro consequences then maybe it would be an issue but from the point of view of the communities -- there aren't. Data centers don't bring a lot of permanent employment and tend to be given tax breaks. They are skeptical that data centers are the boon that these people claim they are -- and they are right to be so since people pushing these data centers have been wildly untrustworthy at best.

Saying "You can't stop it so you might as well get on board and hope that in the future you can convince shareholders/billionaires/US Congress to give you a pittance of UBI" is going to go over like a lead brick. There's no reason to trust that UBI will come if you give up any leverage you have, even if it is a minuscule amount of leverage.

	▲	godwinson__4-8 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I appreciate your perspective. Just to be clear, I wasn't advocating one simply surrenders and "hope that in the future you can convince shareholders/billionaires/US Congress to give you a pittance of UBI". I think I'm more curious why more serious advocacy of UBI itself isn't a major platform vs the things I hear often about data centers. I think in some ways you have touched on that but also as your comment indicates perhaps as part of negotiations as things develop UBI will come more into the forefront. I just see a lot of national politics also around data centers but relatively few on UBI. Again, if you agree that at best this is an "inconvenience" to the status quo then I would think you would also share my surprise or maybe hope that stronger voices should emerge promoting a more sustainable solution - aka UBI. Sometimes it feels like data centers are just a distraction from that more far reaching and yet necessary conversation. Perhaps it is simply a prelude. Thanks for the discussion.