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How big money divides us, especially when we don’t have it
It’s hard to find something more divisive between billionaires and everyone else than a data center.
I’ve been watching from afar, a very obvious and easy to understand pattern of corruption in how data center decisions are made. AI companies, including companies that are not just AI companies, have enormous wealth and influence in that decision making process. Their influence over elected officials in local jurisdictions is offensive to the people who suffer with data centers and people who don’t want data centers in their towns.
Here is the process in a nutshell: AI company proposes data center in some part of a state, county, or city. The local elected officials see big money. They want to get rich, too. They hold hearings, ignore the feedback from their voters, and vote yes to the data center. Why are they voting yes?
The data center will bring big revenue to the local jurisdiction for civil services. This is desirable. We want civil services to be well funded. We want our cities, our utilities and our parks to be orderly. We want a well functioning police and fire department. We want people to get business licenses.
Elected officials who vote “yes” on those data centers are routinely voted out by…
