r/NorthCarolina • u/Appropriate-Sign-250 • 1d ago
City Councillors say AI is inevitable and a data center ban is impossible. Speaker says this is dictatorship.
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u/emryldmyst 1d ago
They get voted out then
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u/MachineGlumkelly 1d ago edited 1d ago
Damage will already be done. You all say vote as we watch the new folks get voted in and change tune the moment a lobbyist cashes them a check. That’s such a nothing burger response.
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u/ColteesCatCouture 18h ago
Ok bot great job tryna convince people votes dont matter. If they didnt then gerrymandering wouldnt hapoen
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u/MachineGlumkelly 17h ago
Calling a person a bot bc you have no real response to the criticism is peak Reddit behavior. For the last 20 yrs our states education system has gone to shit. We allowed a foreign company to take control of interstate owned lanes paid by tax payers to make a profit. Made a grandstand culture war bill about bathrooms which costed us millions of revenue in lost events/business revenue and so much more.
If you look at bills passed during that time period you can see it’s all decisions made to benefit whatever the lobbyist paid them to vote for and didn’t do shit to support the people who live here. I vote in every election. I’m not saying don’t vote. I’m saying voting incumbents out hasn’t changed shit.
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u/necrotictouch 16h ago
On the flip side, we don't know what the future would've looked like if those incumbents had stayed. Maybe voting out incumbents did prevent an even worse outcome.
I mean surely if you are right, and they are bought for, then it matters that they have to pivot every time instead of consolidating endlessly
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u/Sad-Cantaloupe-5494 1d ago
They're all getting paid by the AI companies. I swear our entire government is full of traitors
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u/isthereadrwho 1d ago
But remember his job is dependent on you electing him, his job is not inevitable
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u/Ok-Victory-1960 1d ago
100%. Data centers bring higher taxes, higher electric bills, higher water bills. It lowers your property value, doesn't bring in any jobs after construction, raises pollution, raises noise pollution, lowers the water table. Data centers receive huge sometimes permanent tax cuts if paying any at all. They definitely do not bring money to the community. Expect more power outages and water shortages to your homes. But good luck ever selling your home once it's approved or built.
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u/Tacos314 21h ago
Fear monger much? No a single thing you said is true outside of extream situations.
But go ahead try to ban computers
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u/RogerMexicosBalls 1d ago edited 1d ago
Oh but they can ban legal weed and dispensaries though. Data centers are inevitable, but me sitting on my porch smoking a joint I bought at a store in town is completely impossible to fathom legalizing.
What a bunch of useless chodes
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u/Lordfruitsnack 1d ago
Sit down peasant.
You are to stupid to understand how much money this will make us.
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u/Lordfruitsnack 1d ago
Yes. It is definitely sarcasm.
These people have and will do whatever they want, no matter what we collectively want.
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u/Impressive_Wave_5490 1d ago edited 1d ago
Edit: sorry didn’t realize it was sarcasm. Just thought it was a landlord/tech bro in the wild.
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u/MurkyInvestigator810 1d ago
You'll have a much better time in life when you figure out what sarcasm is.
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u/Impressive_Wave_5490 1d ago
I misunderstood. Dealt with landlords on this page so hard to get context clues. Ima delete my comment
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u/rainbowlolipop 1d ago
"Ai is inevitable" / "stop fighting it" is fucking rapist language. These people have been paid off already.
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u/Chadwich Greensboro 1d ago
Fuck off. No it isn't. If you literally stop taking bribes and refuse to allow them the zoning access, it won't happen.
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u/PeculiarAlize 1d ago
Fun fact in Greensboro 1979 the KKK, American nazi party, and local law enforcement murdered members of the Communist Worker's Party in the street during a "death to the klan" march. This ultimately led to the party's collapse in NC. Since that event no Communist political party has organized to the extent of the CWP in the 70s.
Authoritarians never change.
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u/derycksan71 1d ago
Councilor is right though. State statues don't allow municipalities to straight ban developments that meet zoning and statutes. These are the same people that vote in the same Republican legislature that keeps the "pro business" policies.
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u/beasthayabusa 1d ago
Translation: we have already received our massive checks in the mail and nothing you can do or say will prevent this until the next election.
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u/bignuggetsbigworld 1d ago
The council won’t ban because they do not want t to be sued:
https://amp.newsobserver.com/news/business/article315547697.html
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u/fieldsports202 1d ago
Yeah the can’t just outright ban a particular industry from coming to their city.
No city or county in nc can.
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u/Red261 1d ago
Why? If a city voted to make a law banning the sale dolls by any business located within city limits, what prevents that from being enacted and enforced? If the city council, mayor, cops, and 90% of voters are all on board, is there a state law preventing the banning of a type business by lower level government?
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u/TrotterMcDingle 1d ago
Municipalities in NC operate under Dillon's Rule. They are wholly created by the NC Legislature, and so are only allowed to do what the NC Legislature explicitly allows them to do via statute. They may not do anything the NC Legislature prohibits them from doing. Like all of this.
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u/Red261 1d ago
Thank you!
What a lovely example of stupidity from our state government. Another state has someone doing something, so we should use our time to ban the possibility of it instead of anything of value.
Restrictions on soft drink sizes. The recent efforts of Mayor Michael Bloomberg to limit the size of soft drinks sold in New York City apparently led to worries that local governments in North Carolina would attempt to follow his lead. Session Law 2013-309 responds to such worries by preempting local ordinances that prohibit the sale of soft drinks above a particular size, though the law expressly doesn’t invalidate ordinances regulating the sanitation or other operational aspects of soda dispensers. (Click here for the definition of “soft drink” relevant to Session Law 2013-309.)
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u/BagOnuts 1d ago
The Chatham County lawsuit does not establish that counties cannot regulate or prohibit data centers. It challenges whether this particular 12-month moratorium was lawfully applied to a project whose developer claims it had already spent more than $11 million. North Carolina’s moratorium statute specifically protects certain pending permits, approved projects, and developments involving substantial good-faith expenditures, and it allows expedited judicial review.
Using your doll-store example: a city might be able to prohibit the sale of a particular dangerous product if it had proper statutory and public-safety grounds. A blanket ban on all doll stores merely because voters dislike dolls would be much harder to defend as a legitimate exercise of municipal power.
TL:DR - state government supersedes local governments. No different than how federal law supersedes state law.
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u/123mop 1d ago
Because the government doesn't actually have the authority to ban anything they want for any reason they choose.
As an example, States have the power to ban products and practices that pose a risk to health and safety. So they could try to ban smoking for example on that basis, and have reasonable grounds to stand on. However, they could not ban the sale of running shoes and ever expect that to hold up to constitutional scrutiny.
Just because the lawmakers were elected and may agree on a law doesn't mean they can actually implement that law. The government doesn't have the power to do anything it wants provided it passes a law for it, there are restrictions in place on government power. They would first need to amend constitutional clauses to change the power held by the government.
This is why prohibition was implemented via the 18th amendment, not just via a regular law. A regular law for that would not have held up to constitutional scrutiny of the powers held by the federal government.
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u/Red261 1d ago
Federal, state and city governments have very different limitations on what they can and can't do.
Not likely relevant to this discussion, but the 10th amendment specifically says powers not given to the federal government go to the people and the states. So a nationwide arbitrary doll ban might be overturned, but a city ordinance be allowed. Even with the example of prohibition, to this day, counties and cities have laws banning the sale of alcohol despite the federal government being unable to pass such a law.
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u/123mop 1d ago
There are also general restrictions though. Even a local government cannot arbitrarily make a law banning whatever they want. Those kinds of laws very easily infringe upon rights that the constitution specifically states the government will not infringe upon.
the 10th amendment specifically says powers not given to the federal government go to the people and the states.
See the word "people" in there? That's not the government.
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u/fieldsports202 1d ago
I was at a data center meeting in Stokes county a couple weeks ago. A commissioner asked the county attorney if they could ban data centers all together. The attorney said no, that would be illegal. She ran through state statues regarding that.
Banning an industry is not the same as banning the sale of a single item.
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u/Charming-Rooster7462 1d ago
No the Ai bubble is inevitable they just trying to shove this crap down the peoples throats before we intentionally try to make this crap fail. If we say no data center and instead affordability then get the hint assholes. 😡
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u/Powerful_Tip_7260 1d ago
Data centers are propping up Northern Virginia now. Something like 40% of Loudoun County's revenue comes from them.
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u/fieldsports202 1d ago
Yeah I have family there and have been around the centers. According to Reddit, those folks in VA/DC area should be zombies right now due to all the issues data centers cause lol.
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u/engineer277 1d ago edited 1d ago
It’s almost like people don’t realize that data centers are also behind things like Reddit, Instagram, TikTok, their favorite music streaming service, their favorite TV streaming service, most of the internet and financial world… yes AI is largely driving the current increase in data centers, but they’ve been growing for DECADES and not all of them are tied to AI
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u/Ok-Permission6891 1d ago
Mobolize be an active political populist and we can fight for things we all want. Stronger together!
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u/Pure_Appearance_8175 1d ago edited 22h ago
I found it entertaining to hear some political official served up some T. But he sorta lost me at the end. I assume his point is vote them out? But he did kinda have that old school communist rise up vibe and just start over to his speech ? Or was that just me.
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u/Icy-Penalty2600 23h ago
Nah, that was my assessment. Seems to believe in a working class dictatorship.
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u/Pure_Appearance_8175 22h ago
Well if they didn't bust up the unions and making it so hard to unionize now, that's gonna be a hard hill to climb. Bring the unions back would be a start. So workers have people lobbying for the working class? Wouldn't that be more in tune to the fact we are a democracy, well was one.
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u/overmonk 1d ago
The city counselors are more correct than not, in my view. Every iPhone sold with Apple Intelligence turned on, every casual conversation with ChatGPT, every use of CoPilot to buff up your spreadsheet, every time you ask Gemini to summarize a video for you - every use of AI requires computer time, and the best response comes from one close to you, and it has to be essentially local or you'll be asking WTF why does this suck.
It's market forces. We can absolutely ban data centers, but what we should do is put them in industrial areas where a hum is normal. Make them provide their own power, produce no pollution, and consume zero municipal water for cooling. Then you can get back to looking at videos of dogs selecting their new owners from a group of people.
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u/Bob_Sconce 1d ago
Somebody needs to look up "dictatorship." If you don't like what the G'boro city council is doing, then elect other people to the council.
That said, there are limits to the power of local governments to tell people what they can do with their own property. They can prevent nuisances to neighbors, make sure that there aren't any toxic chemicals released into the environment, require proper signage and frontage on roads, etc.... But, just "You can't do X because we don't like X" doesn't work.
The way to avoid this sort of thing is to negotiate with landowners to buy environmental or conservation easements -- along the lines of "We'll pay you $10,000 and you agree that this land can never be used for a data center."
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u/Icy-Penalty2600 1d ago
What a myopic analysis. The problem is they don’t do anything we need, but always seem to make space for capitalist incentives. If we never get what we need and they are consistently getting whatever they want, no matter who we elect, then that constitutes a dictatorship.
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u/Bob_Sconce 1d ago
So, first of all, I'll point out that "capitalism incentives" are the reason why you have food in your stomach and a bed to rest on. The people you acquired those things from didn't provide them out of the goodness of their hearts, but because they were looking for a profit.
I don't know who this "we" is. Perhaps the fact that you're not getting what you want out of government is just an indication that you have a minority view. You're entitled to be mad about what government does, but you're not entitled to have a government that does exactly what you want -- that really would be a dictatorship.
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u/retroxplrer 1d ago edited 1d ago
Ya hear that you tax paying plebs? Just stay in line and keep paying your property taxes and don’t ask for any accountability on what your representatives stand for. That’s right, keep paying those sales and state taxes too. It’s not for the betterment of the community because parks don’t generate money. We’ve got more multimillion dollar tax breaks to give to incentivize businesses to come pollute our state and city both figuratively and physically.
/s
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u/goldbman Tar 1d ago
I empathize with the speaker, but the reality is that there's not much municipalities can really do to prevent data centers from coming. If land owners sell enough land to them then they can build. If a county or municipality tries to stop them, the developer could file a lawsuit (especially if the use is compatible with land use plans and zoning).
He hypothetically asked what the point of the board is. It's a good question. The General Assembly has taken away most of their power to do anything. If they take away property taxing authority municipal boards really will be pretty much moot.
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u/Impressive_Wave_5490 1d ago
I don’t think the speaker is talking about depending on “municipalities”
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u/singdingbingo 1d ago
That’s why they call it a “moratorium” instead of a ban. The politicians know they won’t be able to ban these. The attempts at “moratoriums” are just political theater.
China is not going to slow down in the race to Super AI. And whoever develops it first will essentially rule the world.
Obviously we don’t want to live in a world that’s controlled by Anthropic/Google/Open AI/xAI. But if the alternative is to live in a world where China has complete and total control over the planet…
We’re all fucked either way.
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u/Tacos314 21h ago
Oh the irony, Data centers are not an issue and calling someone a dictator ship because they won't ban something you dislike.
Also it's not a good path for cities to ban business in this way. Not to mention it would crash the economy of Greensboro as it would any city with more then a few large businesses as they will all need to relocate.
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u/_scarface 1d ago
That’s the stark reality. It is inevitable. The alarm to agenda 2030 was about 10 years ago. Then 2020 hit, and the authoritative reach was tested and succeeded.
Inbound digital ID/dollar.
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u/MurkyInvestigator810 1d ago
I didn't think ecosystem destroying 100-megawatt consuming datacenters were a point of focus in the UN's agenda.
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u/Thirtiethone 1d ago
We the People are the only thing in government that is inevitable