| ▲ | dcosson 3 hours ago |
| Why is skipping public review bad news for everyone? Public review is a blight on the democratic process. Instead of having a set of democratically established laws and regulations that apply fairly to everyone, a small handful of noisy people with too much time on their hands can stop anyone they don't like from doing something that is perfectly legal. It's an incredibly dumb process and bypassing it is good, actually. It also has nothing at all to do with whether the environmental regulations themselves are being followed. |
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| ▲ | GrinningFool 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| Seems to me public review is a failsafe - an acknowledgement that laws and regs can't always keep up with real life harms. |
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| ▲ | tptacek 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Public review in practice is a mechanism for concentrated local interest groups that don't have enough democratic legitimacy to win at the ballot box to instead win via a series of Tuesday night meetings normal people don't go to. There's literature on this: public comment overwhelmingly trends negative. People show up to prevent change. They rarely show up to support it, even if they do support it; normal people feel, reasonably, that their civic responsibility is to vote in actual elections for the policy they support, not to spend their life in City Hall jawboning. | | |
| ▲ | bcrosby95 an hour ago | parent [-] | | > normal people feel, reasonably, that their civic responsibility is to vote in actual elections for the policy they support, not to spend their life in City Hall jawboning. That's not how the vast majority of this works, and the average best case scenario on this you get to vote a politician out after they already fucked people over. |
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| ▲ | ip26 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | You can't give all citizens effective veto power and then expect it will only be used for good in cases where the law is behind. | | | |
| ▲ | an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | [deleted] |
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| ▲ | tptacek 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I think you have to actually do local politics (I'm assuming you do) to really get just how fucked public comment is as a process, and I think this is an important and useful thing to talk about that just won't be possible to talk about in a data center thread, because of the political valence data centers have taken on. |
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| ▲ | quacked 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I live near a small town of about 10,000 people that's about 30 minutes away from a "hot commodity" city. The crown jewel of this small town is the main street, which retains a bit of kitschy Americana that has remained charming for decades and even draws tourists, for whatever reason. A local business owner bought up one of the blocks in the center of the street and announced plans to demolish it in order to build a 5-over-1 complex several stories higher than any of the other buildings. Without the public comment process, he'd have been able to do this practically overnight, completely ruining the street. The public fought back long and hard for many months and eventually won by convincing the town council to vote against the rezoning that would permit this construction. I can't say I'm opposed to the public comment process. (Note that this was not a case of never-change NIMBYism; tons of other similar buildings are going up all over the town completely unopposed. It was the ugly, generic design and the sheer size put so blatantly in the middle of everyone's favorite part of town.) | | |
| ▲ | tptacek 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I don't know, this sure sounds like NIMBYism to me. Public comment was used to organize against multifamily housing units. That's approximately the whole story; I think you pretty much just have to add "organizing against new renewable and grid upgrades" to complete it. | | |
| ▲ | quacked 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | They weren't multifamily units. | | |
| ▲ | alex43578 an hour ago | parent [-] | | "5-over-1 or over-1s, also known as a one-plus-five or a podium building,[1] is a type of multi-family residential building commonly found in urban areas of North America", so either you're wrong about them wanting to build a 5 over 1 or wrong about them being multi-family. |
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| ▲ | lacy_tinpot 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | If it's everyone's favorite part of town why not just codify it at the city level? | | | |
| ▲ | sethherr 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | You clarified it wasn’t “never change NIMBYism” - was it a case of just changes I don’t like NIMBYism? | | |
| ▲ | quacked 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | As I understand it, NIMBYism is "don't ever build anything anywhere in the neighborhood/town", not "don't build in this one spot we all really like". As I said, there are tons of other buildings going up over town. | | |
| ▲ | greatquux an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | Exactly. The "my" in "my backyard" can apply to everyone therefore nothing gets built. The alternative is everything gets built. There has to be a middle ground, which is what zoning laws are meant to accomplish. We have buildings and multi-family housing going up in our town too, but we also have historically-protected buildings on the main street that require some more work if you want to do stuff with them. This is a good balance. | |
| ▲ | tptacek an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | It's literally "don't build on this one spot I really like". It's in the name! |
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| ▲ | Gigachad an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | At least in this instance it's a counterbalance against the psychopathic tech CEOs | | |
| ▲ | tptacek an hour ago | parent [-] | | That's literally what NIMBYs exploiting public comment say: whatever else is happening, at least they're striking back against the psychopathic Private Equity firms who are building all this evil housing. |
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| ▲ | autoexec an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| "The public having access to information on what corporations plan to do in their communities and having the ability to vote to against what corporations want is a blight on the democratic process" is a crazy stance to take. What you call "a small handful of noisy people with too much time on their hands" I call "We the People" and it should fall to them to decide what happens in their own communities. It's legal for me to put a hot tub in my living room. My family doesn't have to let me put it there. It's legal to pave over city park in my community and turn them into parking lots, but the people in my city should have a say in that. |
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| ▲ | nozzlegear 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| > Public review is a blight on the democratic process. Instead of having a set of democratically established laws and regulations that apply fairly to everyone, a small handful of noisy people with too much time on their hands can stop anyone they don't like from doing something that is perfectly legal. We're talking about data centers, which are deeply unpopular with just about everyone. It's laughable to suggest that skipping public review is a good thing here, because it's only going to result in data centers being sneakily approved contrary to the overwhelming desire of constituents. We can ruminate all day on whether public comments or public review is useful in the grand scheme, but the realpolitik of the situation is that – barring possession of a time machine to go back and elect different representation – it's one of the few levers that constituents have to prevent data centers from moving into their area. https://www.natesilver.net/p/why-does-everyone-hate-data-cen... |
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| ▲ | PKop an hour ago | parent [-] | | > which are deeply unpopular with just about everyone. Speak for yourself. Plenty of people support them. The technological progress and economic benefits they bring are good for our country. But are you always an opponent of democracy, or only when you pretend everyone is on your side on an issue? | | |
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