fireman15 wrote: “First it was roads and potholes, now it is airports. Jumping from one broken analogy to the next does not change basic economics or public utility laws.”
The analogies are only broken because of your strident opposition to rational explanations. Just like the Luddite opposition to mechanization, you reject the fact that data centers will be built and the cost of those centers will be paid by consumers.
You just stated, in plain English: "the cost of those centers will be paid by consumers." You finally dropped the corporate PR spin and admitted that everyday consumers are indeed going to pay for Big Tech's private buildouts.
The irony of your argument is hard to miss:
1. The Real "Luddite" Behavior
Repeatedly throwing around the word "Luddite" while clinging to an outdated, 19th-century view of utility ratemaking is pure projection. A true Luddite is not someone who understands technology, hardware, and AI economics. A true Luddite is someone who stubbornly refuses to learn how modern systems work and clings to obsolete concepts when confronted with real-world facts.
2. You Admitted the Cost Shift
For the entire thread, you claimed everything was neatly prorated by usage and that regular folks were not subsidizing anything. Now you outright admit that local consumers will be paying the bill for multi-trillion-dollar corporate facilities. That cost shift onto local families and seniors on fixed incomes has been the core issue all along.
3. Expecting Corporations to Pay Their Own Freight
Nobody is saying data centers should not be built. If a multi-trillion-dollar tech giant wants to construct a massive server farm, market principles dictate that they should pay 100% of their own power plants, high-voltage lines, and substations. Forcing local retirees to cover those private capital costs on their monthly electric bills is not modernization. It is corporate welfare.
Now that you have openly agreed that local consumers are paying for these corporate facilities, the question remains: why do you support forcing everyday retirees to subsidize the power grid expansion of the richest corporations on Earth?