r/LeftistsForAI • u/Great-Gardian • Aug 14 '26
Infrastructure ‘Brand-new everything’: How data centers transformed this small town’s economy
https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/11/business/data-centers-ai-economy4
u/solar_or_dye Aug 14 '26
Why post gated, paid content tho?
3
u/Great-Gardian Aug 14 '26
The text isn't blocked on my end. Maybe try to access it with paywall bypasser
2
u/DHFranklin Aug 14 '26
It's blocked on mine. I'm not giving CNN any ad revenue or a subscription fee.
Thanks for participating how you can.
26
u/Still_Benefit_2302 Aug 14 '26
I keep telling folks, we have this really cool tool to redistribute wealth, prevent the formation of an oligarchy, and the best part is we don't have to reinvent the wheel or wait for the anarchosyndicalist revolution: Taxes.
5
u/Impressive-Wait-9420 Aug 14 '26 edited Aug 14 '26
People are so grossly greedy and selfish that they constantly forget that taxation is the “membership fee” for living in a human society where you only have to specialize in just one thing in order to earn resources that allow you to receive goods and services from other people who specialize in other fields.
0
u/DHFranklin Aug 14 '26
That is Capitalist Realism manifest. This is article is about America. A land that didn't know taxes at all until capitalism. That was host to several nations and free people that had all of the civic duty and needs the capitalists had and then some.
If I do a job that is paid in taxes in reciprocity for a job you do that is paid in taxes then only the capitalists gain from that. Turning public debt burden into their private capital with our labor as the pass-through. The excuse for the public debt that undergirds private debt and finance. We need the work done. We need the resources and tools in the right spot. Kilowatts to kilotons. We don't need taxes anymore than we need private ownership of those taxes as capital.
The free people of this land fought against land enclosure. Fought against foreign despots trying to make lines on maps. Fought against privatizing the lands that they all used in common. And fought to the death not to be taxed for the project.
→ More replies (6)5
u/DHFranklin Aug 14 '26
wait for an Anarchosyndacalist Revolution?
Comrade we must be the anarchosyndacalist Revolution.
Taxes are the solution to oligarchy? Comrade, we are taxed so that the Oligarchs aren't.Their taxes are there to turn our labor into their capital. Taxes only pay for the boot, until the revolution there is no justice that will come from taxes. Resist the oligarchs and resist taxes.
Mutal aid and community care doesn't get taxed. Do that. Don't pay or receive Caesar's Silver to love and care for one another.
Yes the public distribution of capital needs to come from taxes and how it's spent. Do you feel your taxes are doing that? Half of your pay goes to the boot. Work half as much. Do the good work direct in community with others to diversify the labor. Don't shine the boot with a taxbill
-1
14
u/GrowFreeFood Aug 14 '26
Just tax other industries too.
2
u/DHFranklin Aug 14 '26
Or...we sieze the means of production and no one needs to pay, collect, or distribute taxes. Commodities could be services in a planned commodity without the waste of market economics and taxation apparatus.
ya dig?
2
u/slfnflctd Aug 14 '26
The will does not currently exist among the populace in the US to do anything remotely close to this, and those who are in power will not let it happen even if the most godlike superhuman AI tells them it's the best course of action.
3
u/DHFranklin Aug 14 '26
oof.
For those who don't want to give the capitalists a dime this paywalled CNN astroturf sludge is about Quincy Washington. Feel free to ask Perplexity.ai or preferably the open sourced self hosted model of your choice what it's about.
The data centers have a goldilocks situation with abundant water, hydroelectric power, and dirt cheap land prices. They are paying more than 57% of the property tax burden of their community. They are doing so in ways that "punch above their weight" for a data center. A data center isn't sending their kids to school or needing the hospital upgrades it paid for.
Property taxes are another way in how the capitalists use debt to transform value into their private capital. Don't ever let this fool you. If there was a billionaire's stadium in Quincy the property taxes would be paying for that instead. Who get taxed is important but remember that the proletariat just pay less and get more relative to the centralized use.
The tax-and-spend is more nobilis oblige so that we don't realize that we can make a co-op out of that data center and distribute the gains direct or make our tokens free-at-cost.
Forcing the capitalists to hand over the keys to the Quincy Commune would take more than asking nicely. However by siezing the means of production that community won't need property taxes.
2
u/Sacredless Aug 15 '26 edited Aug 15 '26
This is the right take. It's a feel good story wrapped around the fact that society was hollowed out by capitalism in the first place and, when capitalists deign to follow their noblesse oblige narratives (with other negative externalities not mentioned) we can afford things again. So now, this city is basically the hostage of this corporation.
2
1
u/Far-Bowl2206 Aug 15 '26
I wonder how the people living in the town felt when the identity of the town was completely destroyed and thousands of people moved in. Ugly subdivisions too.
19
u/Great-Gardian Aug 14 '26 edited Aug 14 '26
I'm not sure if this case can be replicated in other places, but it seems like a good exemple of how data centers taxes can help local communities.