| ▲ | abirch a day ago |
| It's similar to the people who block roadways to protest climate change. Usually it makes the commuters frustrated and doesn't change anything. Personally I think data centers should pay a 100% fossil fuel tax. Markets respond to incentives. |
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| ▲ | marcosdumay a day ago | parent | next [-] |
| > and doesn't change anything It does change people that don't know about your cause against it, quite reliably as long as activism results go. For climate change, everybody probably heard about it, so yeah. |
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| ▲ | inigyou a day ago | parent [-] | | "there's no such thing as bad publicity" once again. | | |
| ▲ | marcosdumay 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | There is pretty much bad publicity. But for causes it seems to only impact the ones you don't know about. | |
| ▲ | IAmBroom a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | If ever true, it's for brand recognition. PETA's brand recognition has probably made more people anti-vegan than all other vegans put together. |
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| ▲ | plufz a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I think XR would prefer your solution as well. Still I can understand young people’s frustration when we after years and years of knowing about climate change do so little and so few laws of this type are enacted. But I agree that their strategy is lacking. It would probably be easier to get people in general to support it if it didn’t affect them directly, sadly. |
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| ▲ | abirch a day ago | parent [-] | | I understand why people are frustrated with the current system in general. You wouldn't design it this way. We need more young politicians shaping the laws and more entrepreneurs improving society. | | |
| ▲ | inigyou a day ago | parent [-] | | That can't happen, because political positions are basically hereditary. Do you know what happened to every other hereditary political system? | | |
| ▲ | 19 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | [deleted] | |
| ▲ | AnimalMuppet a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | I call baloney. What percentage of the US Congress and governors, say, are people whose parents were in Congress and/or governors? I have no hard data, but my gut feel is less than 25%. That's basically not hereditary. Anyone with hard data, step right up... | | |
| ▲ | scarecrowbob a day ago | parent | next [-] | | I get that it's a single case, but Darlene Graham did just take Lindsey Graham's spot, like, yesterday. | |
| ▲ | inigyou a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | not literally parent-child hereditary but I mean the political class decides who succeeds itself |
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| ▲ | appreciatorBus a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I think fossil fuel taxes are a great idea, but if one consumer, data centers, should pay it, shouldn't all consumers (private car owners) pay it too? That's the only way we'll be able to make good decisions about what types of fossil fuels are useful (i.e. more good than harm) and which are pointless luxuries. |
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| ▲ | bix6 a day ago | parent [-] | | No. Industrial vs consumer use is night and day. Industrial has much higher draw of resources and should pay more as a result especially when total capacity needs to increase specifically for them. | | |
| ▲ | appreciatorBus a day ago | parent [-] | | The reason an industrial use uses x times more than a consumer is because the industry is selling products and services to x consumers. You can't compare them 1:1. | | |
| ▲ | bix6 a day ago | parent | next [-] | | Well the industrial should charge more to cover its costs instead of offloading the cost of its goods to consumers? Why does Walmart get to utilize food stamps or hyperscalers get to drain all the energy? Thats a massive public subsidy for a private corporation. | | |
| ▲ | inigyou a day ago | parent [-] | | In the end the consumer pays. Why should the consumer pay tax on the fossil fuels used to bring them AI but not on the fossil fuels used to bring them to work? That's the inconsistency. | | |
| ▲ | bix6 a day ago | parent [-] | | Is gas not taxed or am I missing something? | | |
| ▲ | appreciatorBus 21 hours ago | parent [-] | | Yes it is but there are 2 items at issue:
- if we are concerned about environmental externalities (as we should be IMO) then we have to ask if current taxes were designed to price those externalities or if they were just designed to pay off infrastructure. As far as I understand, it's the latter, so if we want to ensure polluters pay, whether they operate an AI data center or an Acura, we might need to charge more. Importantly this need not be tax - it can just be something immediately refunded to all citizens, so you end up with a scenario where people who use a lot are paying people who use little. - the original poster seemed to feel that some gas consumers should pay much more than others. If we do policy based on vibes, this makes sense. Big = bad vibes = pay more. But IMO vibes are a very bad basis for good policy and will just make things worse. | | |
| ▲ | fragmede 20 hours ago | parent [-] | | It's not vibes if you use numbers. Have the first 10 kWh be free, the next 100 are charged at $0.10/hr, the next 1000 at $0.20/hr and go up from there. (Whatever numbers actually make sense.) If the factory only uses a house's worth of electricity, they pay the same rate. If a house uses a factory's worth of electricity, they also pay the same rate as the factory would. | | |
| ▲ | appreciatorBus 18 hours ago | parent [-] | | What is the factory exists to serve 10,000 houses? To be clear, I think you’ve got the right direction – free stuff for humans up to a point and then market rate for everyone/everything after that. I just think it’s silly to pretend that companies are polluting for shits and giggles. They’re polluting for us. I think that pricing pollution is the right way to go, I just know that the outcome isn’t going to be some magical world where companies pay for pollution but consumer don’t. The only way it works is that the costs get passed on and the consumer pays. | | |
| ▲ | bix6 17 hours ago | parent [-] | | They’re not polluting for us they are polluting to make money for shareholders. People buying stuff is just a necessary step (sometimes) to make that happen. | | |
| ▲ | appreciatorBus 9 hours ago | parent [-] | | A nonprofit, co-op, or government entity, serving the same customer the same product would produce an identical amount of pollution as the for-profit factory. | | |
| ▲ | bix6 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | Not true. The non profit might add a screen to catch pollution before it hits the waterway. | | |
| ▲ | appreciatorBus 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | Sure they might do that, just as a for profit company might. The decision by either would face the same trade off - an increase in costs that their customers/patrons may not care about or be willing to pay for. The answer for both is the same - price externalities so that the decision to pollute less is economic rather than moral. |
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| ▲ | skeaker a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | Exactly, you can't compare them and they should therefore be treated differently. |
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| ▲ | cliglot a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > Personally I think data centers should pay a 100% fossil fuel tax. Markets respond to incentives. Yes, by changing the incentives to align with their desires. I guarantee if a politician had a serious chance of introducing something like this that record breaking amounts of money would be poured into even a primary election these days to stop them. |
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| ▲ | bix6 a day ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Data centers should just pay anything really. They get massive tax breaks, eat up huge swathes of industrial zoned land, and piss off anyone nearby. And for what? 3 permanent jobs and a penny worth of tax revenue. |
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| ▲ | ourmandave a day ago | parent [-] | | I was going to say 4 permanent jobs, because they have to hire a security guard. But they'll just use AI powered flock cameras instead, so never mind. |
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