Almost all of the neo-luddite talking points are either directly from this book or are from various flavors of Indian scaremongering on social media or youtube for clicks quoting this book.
Generously, I think there are some semi-legitimate problems people in this thread have brought up, none of which are unique to datacenter development (versus any other industrial building project) and none of which would be solved by preventing people from building datacenters.
If you're upset about tax breaks Google and Meta have received in the past for datacenter projects, then don't elect grifting politicians who are getting bribes (in the form of cushy no-show jobs after they leave office) for handing out tax breaks. You can stop datacenter construction, but then the grifters will just arrange tax breaks for something else. The datacenter projects are wildly profitable without any tax breaks; non-FAANG companies like Digital Realty, Cogent, CoreSite, and others have been profitably building them for decades.
If you're upset that electricity supply isn't keeping up with demand, then build more power plants. Don't try to curtail electricity consumption by cucking a growing industry that punches above its weight in GDP-contribution-per-KWh. We could have near-infinite amounts of clean, safe electricity if nuclear power plants hadn't previously been targeted by the same retarded Boomers who are now protesting the reflecting pool.
If you're upset that datacenters don't employ enough of the right kind of people, then think about how many people the empty field where it is being built will employ if it sits empty instead. My experience from dealing with staff at these places is that it's not H1Bs, but even if it was, we'd be better off getting rid of the H1B program than trying to eliminate every industry that hires them. I don't like child labor, but I'm not advocating for banning people from wearing shoes because Nike once hired some kids in Indonesia.
If you're upset that datacenters use water, then you're fucking retarded. Their small water use is way more productive for society than golf courses, landscaping, air conditioning of other large spaces, most other manufacturing, etc. The water consumption argument is literally made-up propaganda, spread to prominence by a journalist who misplaced a decimal point because faggot journalists can't math.
If you're upset that datacenters are being built here in the U.S., and not in China, then you're likely a CCP shill who's trying to get us to all move our data there so they can sift through it. Or if you think moving them to outer space is instead the solution, then you're advocating for a future where Elon Musk controls everyone's access to compute and can ration it out as he sees fit.
If you think "we already have enough datacenters" or "people shouldn't be allowed to build what they want on the land they've purchased," then you're a socialist asshole who needs to go back to whatever shithole country from which you immigrated. Americans believe in free markets and private property rights. A fake moral panic over AI or whatever doesn't mean that other people have to bend to your ill-informed will.
Did I address everyone's argument?
