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Yeah if you look at it purely from a municipal profit and loss point of view, datacenters are clearly great in that they ideally would pay higher taxes and have
by altmanaltman 3mo ago
Yeah if you look at it purely from a municipal profit and loss point of view, datacenters are clearly great in that they ideally would pay higher taxes and have less drain than something like a shopping mall.
But in this case you also need to consider other points of view to decide what the right answer is, such as the extreme resource extraction datacenters have, pollution issues, and the opportunity cost of using limited land for other purposes.
If you're looking purely from a short-term profit and loss analysis and ignore all other factors, datacenters is the right answer by default but you arrive it at it using the wrong method.
- user43928 3mo agoI found this article posted yesterday interesting: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49180901 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49180901 I am under the impression that they are building data centers in very rural areas where as you can see there is no issue of limited land. Whether pollution is a significant concern there, I also doubt, unless they construct a coal plant to power it.
- hinkley 3mo agoYou’ve forgotten sales taxes and income taxes generated by shopping malls, which is a pretty big oversight. The square meters per employee is much lower for retail than for a data center. They’ve gotten quite good at keeping staffing low.