Such an elitist thing that people do trying to separate "ideology" from reality. That Joe the plumber hates how the data center built by big tech cut his home value in half, but he couldn't possibly develop an "ideological" hatred of big tech. It also colluded to censor and enshittify his favorite app (tiktok) and drive Grandma insane for going on a decade. But he couldn't possibly draw connections between those things. He's no public intellectual posting on X everyday, he's just a neighborhood guy.
Where I live, if data centers actually had the power to cut home values in half then supporting building more data centers would become my single biggest political priority. I do not own the place I live, and every dollar of property appreciation for incumbent homeowners makes it one dollar more expensive for me to afford one. I have no interest in preventing home values from decreasing.
But actually data centers don't cut home values in half, anywhere, because they have some of the least significant externalities of any industrial building - the claims about their impact on residential neighborhoods are ill-informed lies, not very different from people being psychosomatically worried about EM radiation from cell phones giving them cancer. And TikTok was a big tech app from the get go, so if this hypothetical Joe the plumber really does think that the experience of using TikTok has gotten worse for himself or driven his grandmother insane in some way, and thinks that the best way to solve this problem is by preventing random data centers from being built in his neighborhood, then he is badly confused at best.
But one major argument in the article is that the pithy summary you gave of a hypothetical Joe the plumber and why he might have an ideological problem with big tech, is inconsistent with survey data from ordinary Americans (in the section "Americans love big tech, as long as you ask about specific companies"). Whether this is an elitist thing to believe has zero bearing on whether it is a true thing to believe.
It would cut home values in half because there's a 24/7 drone as loud as a freight train in their back yards. It is intolerable, you would not be able to capitalize because you too would have to leave.
Comments
Such an elitist thing that people do trying to separate "ideology" from reality. That Joe the plumber hates how the data center built by big tech cut his home value in half, but he couldn't possibly develop an "ideological" hatred of big tech. It also colluded to censor and enshittify his favorite app (tiktok) and drive Grandma insane for going on a decade. But he couldn't possibly draw connections between those things. He's no public intellectual posting on X everyday, he's just a neighborhood guy.
Where I live, if data centers actually had the power to cut home values in half then supporting building more data centers would become my single biggest political priority. I do not own the place I live, and every dollar of property appreciation for incumbent homeowners makes it one dollar more expensive for me to afford one. I have no interest in preventing home values from decreasing.
But actually data centers don't cut home values in half, anywhere, because they have some of the least significant externalities of any industrial building - the claims about their impact on residential neighborhoods are ill-informed lies, not very different from people being psychosomatically worried about EM radiation from cell phones giving them cancer. And TikTok was a big tech app from the get go, so if this hypothetical Joe the plumber really does think that the experience of using TikTok has gotten worse for himself or driven his grandmother insane in some way, and thinks that the best way to solve this problem is by preventing random data centers from being built in his neighborhood, then he is badly confused at best.
But one major argument in the article is that the pithy summary you gave of a hypothetical Joe the plumber and why he might have an ideological problem with big tech, is inconsistent with survey data from ordinary Americans (in the section "Americans love big tech, as long as you ask about specific companies"). Whether this is an elitist thing to believe has zero bearing on whether it is a true thing to believe.
It would cut home values in half because there's a 24/7 drone as loud as a freight train in their back yards. It is intolerable, you would not be able to capitalize because you too would have to leave.