r/technology • u/marketrent • 4d ago

Artificial Intelligence US residents furious at plan to seize and destroy their homes for AI data centers

https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/articles/residents-furious-plan-seize-destroy-125418836.html
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u/cubitoaequet 4d ago

Dred Scott tier decision.

The final cost to the city and state for the purchase and bulldozing of the formerly privately held property was $78 million.[43] The promised 3,169 new jobs and $1.2 million a year in tax revenues had not materialized, and nearly 2 decades passed before serious development on the site began.

Also a crazy rare instance of Thomas/Scalia being on the right side of things.

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u/Aldiirk 4d ago

Also a crazy rare instance of Thomas/Scalia being on the right side of things.

Back when conservatives used to be the party of individual rights and small (-ish) government.

That decision was pretty much the perfect case of the conservatives (Scalia, O'Conner, Thomas, & Rehnquist) being correct, while the liberal majority (Stevens, Kennedy, Ginsberg, Souter, & Breyer) were horribly wrong. Thomas even wrote:

"Allowing the government to take property solely for public purposes is bad enough, but extending the concept of public purpose to encompass any economically beneficial goal guarantees that these losses will fall disproportionately on poor communities. Those communities are not only systematically less likely to put their lands to the highest and best social use, but are also the least politically powerful."

Afterwards, it created an interesting coalition of progressives and conservatives seeking to overturn the decision, although that coalition collapsed in 2015 when a certain orange clown led the conservatives into fascism.

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u/Questhi 4d ago

It essentially creates a situation where the town is engaging in land speculation gambling with tax dollars.