Why Libertarians Fall for the AI Trap ｜ 5⧸21⧸26
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Summary
The artificial intelligence boom has become one of the biggest drivers of the American economy, but it s also triggered a growing backlash against the data centers that make the boom possible. Tech moguls have rushed to build giant warehouses packed with the computing power needed to run AI systems, but they ve done almost nothing to explain to ordinary Americans why those facilities deserve so much land, water, and electricity.
Transcript
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Get 20% off almost all regular-priced merchandise.
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Two days only, Tuesday, May 26th, and Wednesday, May 27th.
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The artificial intelligence boom has become one of the biggest drivers of the American economy.
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It's also triggered a growing backlash against the data centers that make the boom possible.
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Tech moguls have rushed to build giant warehouses packed with the computing power needed to run
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AI systems, but they've done almost nothing to explain to ordinary Americans why those facilities
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deserve so much land, water, electricity, and political favoritism. You would think that that
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failure would have created an obvious opening for libertarians. Governments shower data center
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projects with subsidies, wield eminent domain to seize land, and help politically connected
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corporations reshape local communities in the name of technological progress. A coherent
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libertarian response would attack the merger of state power and corporate power. Instead,
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many libertarians have chosen to cheer the expansion without asking what the technology
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will be used for or whom it will serve. Their quasi-religious loyalty to capital has pushed
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them into another foolish position and exposed the danger of turning an economic theory into
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a full worldview. The tech elite insists that AI will revolutionize the world, but they've done
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almost nothing to tell average people how their own lives will be improved. Silicon Valley
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entrepreneurs spin wild stories about superhuman intelligence and the automation of tens of
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millions of jobs. That doesn't sound like a sales pitch. That sounds like the setup for a science
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fiction dystopian movie. The one concrete justification they do offer is strategic.
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AI will supposedly define the future of warfare, and America must stay ahead of China. This is
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their strongest argument, and it is legitimately one worth listening to. That argument would carry
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more weight if the same people pushing AI weren't also committed to building the kind of technology
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They're not preparing some noble shield for the republic.
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They're building tools that can make the United States
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look a lot more like the techno-authoritarian China that they claim to fear.
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Libertarians can understand this principle when it comes to handing the government power,
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but they don't seem to grasp it when they're handing technology to corporations
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that will then hand it to the government, which will then use it to gain power.
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Data centers consume a staggering amount of electricity,
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sometimes drawing as much power as a moderately sized city.
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They also use a large volume of water, create nonstop noise, and disfigure the landscape.
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Developers have found ways to soften some of these costs by building new power infrastructure
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and improving cooling efficiency, but none of these problems have been solved.
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In the meantime, local communities absorb the burden.
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Data centers create construction jobs while they're being built, but once the construction
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ends, they employ surprisingly few people. Governments usually justify subsidies by
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promising long-term economic activity and job growth. In the case of data centers,
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corporations collect the incentives while communities get very little in return.
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A sane political movement would notice that, but many libertarians haven't. Instead of
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challenging subsidies and land seizures, they have fought to champion the projects.
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Nick Lespy of Reason recently posted a chart showing that almond farmers use far more water
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than AI data centers. Now, almonds are notoriously inefficient in water usage, so it's kind of a
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cherry-picked case, but whatever, we'll give the libertarian his due. I'll agree that agriculture
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probably does consume more water overall, and in fact, I'm sure it does. But the comparison gives
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away the problem. You see, people eat food. AI, at least so far, mostly offers job displacement
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and government surveillance. Libertarianism grew, in part, out of the Austrian school of economics,
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which is very useful for understanding markets, but it was never meant to serve as a complete
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theory of human life. Like Marxists, however, many libertarians have turned an economic framework
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into a totalizing ideology. Free markets, contract law, and voluntary exchange become
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all-encompassing lenses through which everything must be judged. Once that happens, it becomes
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difficult to see anything that doesn't show up in the GDP. The real question is not just how much
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of a resource gets spent, but for what purpose. Most people wouldn't give up a hand to save a
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cockroach. Most people would give up their lives to save a child. On paper, preserving the cockroach
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may look like a more efficient transaction, but only a lunatic would fail to understand why no
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sane person would ever choose it over the child. The raw numbers, the raw accounting, that doesn't
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actually tell you what decision to make. You need a human context, a framework of values to actually
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apply the data. And this is where libertarianism and its desire to turn everything into an
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economic equation fails. Economics helps explain financial exchange, but in its hunger for
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abstraction, it often strips away the human element that drives actual decisions. Treat
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almonds and AI as interchangeable economic activity, and you erase the context that gives
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moral meaning to both. That's the error every ideology makes. Grand unified theories comfort
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the rational mind because they promise predictable clarity. Then they collide with actual human
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beings living in actual places. The Canadian developer Kevin O'Leary recently went on Tucker
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Carlson's podcast to praise the record-setting data center he wants to build in Utah. Carlson
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pressed him repeatedly to name a job AI would create for ordinary Americans. O'Leary couldn't
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identify a single one. He fell back on a vague assurance that new technology, it'll just always
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create some jobs somewhere in the future. The one benefit he did seem sure about was that AI
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might help America defend Taiwan in a future war with China. That's a revealing answer to citizens
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who were asking about how this technology would help their own country. Many libertarians now
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seem to support data centers out of sheer loyalty to capital itself, which means economic activity
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becomes an end unto itself. Progress, no matter the cost, is presumed to produce more liberty,
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but that's delusional. The first great use of AI is not going to be liberation. It'll be
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surveillance and control. The same corporate and political class that backed vaccine mandates,
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digital surveillance censorship and biometric passes during covid they're now the ones who
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are demanding trust on ai look i guess it's great that mark zuckerberg wants to like sit next to
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trump at some meeting somewhere but i'm sorry i don't think this signals an actual change of heart
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i don't think this person has suddenly become human and is really interested in making america
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great and the most competitive in the world i'm pretty sure he's still the lizard man who wanted
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to censor me on facebook our tech oligarchs lined up with democrats outsourced american jobs
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embraced censorship and showed enormous appetite for monitoring the population they're just not
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trustworthy allies look i truly appreciate the libertarian mind i understand what that level of
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autism does to somebody you want to correct people who are saying something stupid you want to make
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sure that you're the smartest guy in the room if you see a little detail it's easy to say oh well
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i'm not siding with that person because they're just swallowing whatever lie they've been told
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and so i get it the backlash against data centers in many cases it might lack intellectual polish
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but you have to understand listen to my real argument the instinct is sound yes sometimes
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they get the facts wrong but you have to understand that they are directionally correct
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because they understand who hates them and who is working for them the elites driving ai are not
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on our side and americans have no reason to sacrifice their communities resources and liberty
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on behalf of people who plainly intend to use this technology against them in the near future
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