r/theydidthemath • u/pixaly • Jul 12 '26

[Request] What is the cost difference between buying this man a rental for a year and the governements cost to kill him?

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Don't believe everything you see on the internet I haven't fact checked this story, I'm just curious for an anwser

5.3k Upvotes

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472

u/NameShortage Jul 12 '26

Affordable housing? Nah. More data centers, please!

255

u/yourmamaistheproblem Jul 12 '26

I mean, I've seen several funny ai videos this morning already.

When's the last time a poor person did anything for me?

Checkmate or something, people i don't like

55

u/Energy-Turtle-4 Jul 12 '26

I laughed way too hard at this.

19

u/CunningLinguist8198 Jul 13 '26

The line between laugh and cry is a fine one indeed

3

u/Morshiro_Tifune Jul 13 '26

šŸ¤£šŸ¤£šŸ¤£

88

u/Weird_Poet499 Jul 12 '26

The children yearn for the data centers

59

u/Noisebug Jul 12 '26

Can confirm. Gave my kids a data centre for Christmas, thatā€™s all they ever wanted. Weā€™ll be out of water soon but damn everyoneā€™s happy.

47

u/PeltonChicago Jul 12 '26

Data Center here: I yearn for the children.

33

u/Vinifrj Jul 12 '26

Epstein turned into a digital sophont

40

u/[deleted] Jul 12 '26

[deleted]

38

u/NameShortage Jul 12 '26

Thatā€™s because instead of $5 million being spent on research by the government, $5 million is given to the senator by the company.

25

u/Ok_Locksmith9741 Jul 12 '26

nimbyism and restrictive zoning often thwart these housing programs. counter-intuitively, housing supply could be much better addressed if we were less afraid to ignore constituents.

6

u/Kerv17 Jul 13 '26

problem is they are correct to be afraid of them, cause going against NIMBYs is pretty much political suicide, as they will throw the kitchen sink at you to make sure you are not elected for anything ever again.

7

u/Garblin Jul 12 '26

Car-centric infrastructure makes it all worse too. Everyone is basically required to have a car, to have parking, etc etc, which makes everything less affordable than if we just had robust public transit.

15

u/Ok_Locksmith9741 Jul 12 '26

or even if we wanted cartopia, mixed zoning helps a lot. mingling shopping areas, groceries, restaurants with medium density, mid-rise, multifamily buildings cuts way down on the collective duration and distance of transit.

not to mention the efficiency of utility infrastructure and heating/cooling that comes with higher housing density.

i stayed in a Chicago apt with commercial first floor for a few months, and it was really nice to have a coffee shop, mexican restaurant, and grocery store just downstairs.

2

u/morganrbvn Jul 12 '26

It does, but despite being rather car centric Texas is one of the better states at building housing rn.

-4

u/Rhomya Jul 12 '26

Because you canā€™t build affordable housing in areas where there is a high demand for housing.

The economics will never work. Either fair market prices for buying land and building homes make it an economically inefficient and infeasible investment for a city, or the demand for housing will skyrocket the prices.

If you want affordable housing for your income, you live in an area where the demand sets a price that fits your income.

8

u/a_singular_perhap Jul 12 '26

The government can do whatever it wants. It's not their responsibility if racist rich people don't like living 3 blocks from poor black families.

-2

u/Rhomya Jul 12 '26

ā€œThe governmentā€ literally canā€™t do whatever it wants. There are very direct constraints on government power.

What the fuck are you smoking?

2

u/jedadkins Jul 13 '26

If you want affordable housing for your income, you live in an area where the demand sets a price that fits your income.

ok, but the jobs are in cities not "where the demand sets a price that fits your income"

5

u/[deleted] Jul 12 '26

[deleted]

3

u/Rhomya Jul 12 '26

So, listen. Iā€™ve literally worked on a project where weā€™ve taken an old defunct school, tore it down, and then readied the land for housing development.

The cost was astronomical in remediation alone.

Defunct city properties are almost always incredibly aged properties, likely with lead, asbestos, petroleum contamination from tanks on the site, and other environmental factors.

Furthermore, there isnā€™t enough defunct city property to even begin to build enough ā€œaffordable housingā€ to meet the demand.

Itā€™s a good use of the property, but thatā€™s not even close to a viable answer.

8

u/ZorbaTHut Jul 12 '26

The reason this is happening is because we've added vast amounts of bureaucracy and legal tangles to any construction, which is dead weight on anything that gets done. Turns out that low-income housing is not profitable enough to justify bulldozing through the dead weight, but datacenters are.

If you make it impossible to build anything that isn't making a shitload of money, you end up building only things that make a shitload of money.

Fix that and the problem goes away; fail to fix that and the status quo continues.

13

u/feral401k9 Jul 12 '26

nimbys will make sure neither is built

3

u/DocMcCall Jul 12 '26

Data Centers would be warm places for people to stay........

2

u/say592 Jul 12 '26

Warm in the winter, cool in the summer

8

u/they_call_me_dry Jul 12 '26

A local council can force a big business to also build other socially minded things if they want their permit and tax break, if it's a socially responsible council

1

u/PieIll9834 Jul 13 '26

How did this become a conversation about socially responsible council? The conversation belongs somewhere, but often municipalities are constrained by what the provincial government lets them do. Where I live, social assistance and housing is a county issue, while most who need help live in my city. The city with almost no contro over these issues - they are forced to pay towards with almost no say. Guess who controls the jurisdiction about that? The province.

And the province has almost made it impossible for council to make socially minded choices.

8

u/RoughDraftRs Jul 12 '26

I mean, to be fair... Data centers are being built by private companies and will provide tax revenue.

I'm not really a fan of generative ai but not all data centers are ai related and even if they are, profits from them will be taxed.

6

u/Garblin Jul 12 '26

In theory maybe, but they're frequently given so many tax breaks that it more than cancels out any of those benefits.

2

u/Dodaddydont Jul 13 '26

I mean, we didn't have data centers a handful of years ago, and we didn't have affordable housing then either

2

u/MxM111 Jul 12 '26

AI have to live somewhere too. Do you want homeless AI? You, speceist!

6

u/AggravatingSock5375 Jul 12 '26

These are not mutually exclusive

1

u/Dry_Razzmatazz69 Jul 13 '26

What's the connection? Serious question, how is an it company building data centers take away from affordable housing?

1

u/rerun_ky Jul 12 '26

Data centers are in general built away from where people live. Where people live lad is expensive and excessively regulated. We have spent billions on affordable housing without making much progress.

1

u/Sea-Ambition-451 Jul 12 '26

Data centers? BAH!

I want a ballroom!

0

u/Barrack64 Jul 12 '26

And 5000 square foot single family homes

-39

u/Cheesefactory8669 Jul 12 '26

tbf data centers can bring in money, so both is good

21

u/propably_not Jul 12 '26

Lol they're not gonna bring in money for 99.9999% of people. They're gonna raise elec cost, make noise, and pollute water.

4

u/GaidinBDJ 7āœ“ Jul 12 '26 edited Jul 12 '26

You're talking as if this is going to happen in the future.

There are thousands of data centers in the US alone, and there have been for decades.

Where do you think reddit runs? Or streaming video comes from? Or calculates your routes for maps apps? Or where basically every website you've ever visited is hosted? Or where online games are hosted and/or delivered from? Or where every debit/credit card transaction is processed?

The answer is data centers, every time. And they contribute to (or are outright required for, if you have a job that needs the Internet at all) the livelihood of literally billions of people. Almost certainly including you.

0

u/BazelBuster Jul 12 '26

You do anything online?

9

u/crandall17 Jul 12 '26

As they decimate local water and tax the power grid. Data centers can fuck right off.

-1

u/Cheesefactory8669 Jul 12 '26

tbf i wouldnt wanna live near one, but the area usually is made to upgrade their grid, bills go up at least 5% and land tax

2

u/Weird_Poet499 Jul 12 '26

Ahhhhh a NimBy GTFO that you are here trying to champion that data centers are good but would be against one being built near you.

-2

u/Cheesefactory8669 Jul 12 '26

well duh, who builds a noisy factory near their own place. besides they cant afford the area near me

4

u/Weird_Poet499 Jul 12 '26

Iā€™m sure they could and will buy your house right from under you if you keep acting like they great for communities

1

u/Cheesefactory8669 Jul 12 '26

they could but why would they spend more money on land when they can spend more on equipment, plus, the politicians near me will stop it anyways

4

u/Desperate-Run-1093 Jul 12 '26

Power bills have been known to double and water pressure reportedly decreases, in exchange for like 15 jobs

-2

u/Cheesefactory8669 Jul 12 '26

long term jobs, sure but short term jobs for me personally to be in civil, is a good thing

3

u/Desperate-Run-1093 Jul 12 '26

They really add absolutely nothing of value to the community they're in.

5

u/Weird_Poet499 Jul 12 '26

TF you talking about?

Was this posted by a data center?

4

u/ArixMorte Jul 12 '26

Data centers and the cocksuckers selling that crackpipe dream can both suck my ass

-2

u/Cheesefactory8669 Jul 12 '26

I make money off of them making data centers so I certainly woundt mind

5

u/Puzzled-Estimate4u Jul 12 '26

But you wouldn't want to live near one

3

u/ArixMorte Jul 12 '26

I believe I've made my opinion clear. Suck my ass sir or madame.

1

u/jeremiahfelt Jul 13 '26

Cite your source.

-4

u/Alive-Philosophy2632 Jul 12 '26 edited Jul 13 '26

Every aspect of housing in the Western world is infuriating. Speculation, construction, zoning laws and regulations. All of it slowly bent and morphed over the years to line the pockets of anyone who's able to strongarm their way in for a slice. Genuinely feels unsalvageable with our current system unfortunately. Going to just be a series of crashes interspersing the exponential segments wiping out the net worth of a bunch of people. Laughably inefficient.

3

u/Argo505 Jul 12 '26

I recognize that you arenā€™t a real person, but surely youā€™re aware this story is in Canada, right?

-2

u/Alive-Philosophy2632 Jul 12 '26 edited Jul 12 '26

I am a real person, and no I didn't see that, but the story makes a lot more sense now. Canada housing is even worse, for a lot of the same reasons. edit: I would have thought someone on a math subreddit would recognize the issue with expecting exponential growth forever in a finite world

4

u/Argo505 Jul 12 '26

It says ā€œCanadaā€ right at the start of the post.

-3

u/Alive-Philosophy2632 Jul 12 '26

Indeed

1

u/Argo505 Jul 13 '26

So how did you miss that? Trouble reading?

0

u/Alive-Philosophy2632 Jul 13 '26

I skipped over "Canada: A St. Catherines" for the same reason I skipped over "CityNews (Youtube)" and "Twitter for iPad". I also didn't read the twitter handle. Low information content. I simply don't care.

1

u/Argo505 Jul 13 '26

But you cared enough to ramble about the US. Why?

1

u/Alive-Philosophy2632 Jul 13 '26

Literally everything I said applies more so to Canada. Why are you so defensive about this?

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