Ah, capitalism!
Technically it’s socialism - the population is subsidising the datacenters. It’s only capitalism when it comes to getting paid
They are raising prices because there is new demand in the market. That’s not socialism at all, it’s market forces.
I’m betting the datacenters and power companies are funded by capital from investors that demand to receive the maximum capital return that can be extracted from that municipality. That’s capitalism
If you are looking for the truest -ism that this would be, it would be the original Mussolini definition of fascism as the merger of state and government, that is now closer to what we would call corporatism.
It is not socialism. It is literally capitalism. Socialism is a form of government. It is true that the costs of higher energy are being spread across society and therefore socialized, but that is not the same as socialism.
I’m sure you meant this as a joke, a good one at that - remember the /s :D
Yes, i’m getting rinsed 😂
Please provide your definition of socialism.
Loobying is bribery.
Socialize the expenses, privatize the profits. Everything is working as designed.
I participate in the “residential smart thermostat rewards” program where they can adjust my temps during high demand periods. In the past it has been like if it’s 100F out they will bump my settings from 77 to 79 which is not a big deal and gets me like two weeks of free electricity.
This year those mother fuckers have been bumping the thermostat up to like 86 when it’s 87 outside. Gee I wonder what the fucking difference is now? I can reject their temp settings in the app, but I can only do it like three times before they cancel my rewards. I’m half tempted to go wire up a little Arduino in series with the thermostat so I can control the AC without touching the smart thermostat if needed.
I had a similar deal (I actually got a free Nest thermostat out of it), but eventually I disabled that feature. Instead, I now use a fixed temperature upper bound that is at the edge of my comfortable range. Of course, this is because I can afford to run the air conditioning when it gets that hot.
This is honestly the first year I’ve even noticed the events. Previously I’d notice the email like a few days later and check the logs to see what they did. This was the first time where I was just at home and felt noticeably uncomfortable and checked the thermostat to see they’d set it to 86F which is outrageous. Its pissing me off enough that I want to cheat the system instead of just opt out, because like… The fucking audacity.
If I got that letter I’d be on the verge of going Paper Mario on that fuckin place
WHY is everyone so ANGRY at This? It’s the EXACT same Thing that Happens when your Neighbors have a HUGE Power Hungry weekend! EVERYONE Pays an Increase INSTEAD of JUST your Neighbor! I’ve NEVER had to Pay MORE for a Bill when I’ve used MORE Energy! It’s ALWAYS Distributed to EVERYONE instead!
You’re paying thrice:
1: With your spare time in which you give advice on forums and maintain Wikipedia pages. This information is getting slurped up by AI crawlers.
2: Implicitly with your money, to get some new AI doodad on your laptop or your phone, trained on 1.
3: See meme.And that’s why billionaires exists.
Hell with billionaires and tax cuts to increase something the average person won’t enjoy, I bet it’s even more than thrice.
Property tax increase cause property is used but not taxed due to being a ‘big project’, if another company built there (besides say wal mart it’d be taxed)
Power bill increase, which we see happens to OPs post.
Using land that could benefit the area, it’s probably a large complex that could help the locals and not make their power bill larger.
Having a complex that heats up local area for things not beneficial to locals. Global warming but thankfully some ai model will grow?
Using water that makes drinking water worse for locals. Read stories of people near data centers, losing all water pressure so the data center can have water. Cause that’s more important than people.
Only helping the person who built it vs the locals. I really have no idea who data centers help. I assume some are for the crappy bit we see when we Google but so many must be private. Also who hasn’t learned to go through search results? Seriously that’s a skill needed, if you don’t have it you need to learn. I may have accepted the new paradigm but I would prefer a bit of work going back to searching.
There no good reason for this crap. They get built but don’t benefit anyone but the rich. They just want serfs anyways, is that the real future?
See meme
Wait, which?
FWIW,
wp:Opposition to AI data centers,
wp:Military applications of artificial intelligence,
wp:Category:Artificial intelligence,
36 subcats and 247 articles,
wp:Discrimination against robots,
wp:Category:Artificial intelligence controversies,
3 subcats and 27 articles
wp:Category:Existential risk from artificial intelligence,
64 articles
wp:How to Survive a Robot Uprising,
How to Survive a Robot Uprising: Tips on Defending Yourself Against the Coming Rebellion is a semi-satirical book by Daniel Wilson published in November 2005.
Critics believe that the data center has the capability to process “all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Internet searches, as well as all types of personal data trails—parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital ‘pocket litter’.”[6] In response to claims that the data center would be used to illegally monitor email of U.S. citizens, in April 2013 an NSA spokesperson said, “Many unfounded allegations have been made about the planned activities of the Utah Data Center, … one of the biggest misconceptions about NSA is that we are unlawfully listening in on, or reading emails of, U.S. citizens. This is simply not the case.”[4]
wp:Ethics of artificial intelligence,
Resisting AI: An Anti-fascist Approach to Artificial Intelligence is a book on artificial intelligence (AI) by Dan McQuillan, published in 2022 by Bristol University Press.
wp:Category:Criticism of artificial intelligence
1 subcat with 32 articles, and 12 articles
wp:Democratic backsliding in the United States,
wp:Wikipedia:Writing articles with large language models,
Search Google: How to destroy a data center
including:
Datacenter Violence
https://www.reddit.com/r/aiwars/comments/1pm2h7w/datacenter_violence/
What would be the easiest way to stop data from flowing out of a data center? I’m writing a novel where a terrorist needs to successfully halt all data flowing from a large data center. Would it be best to destroy fiber cables? A Virus?
What is the point of this collection of links? What are you trying to communicate with this comment?
Spam account? seems like ai slop
Check my profile, and you’ll see how spammy it is.
They might serve more than AI crawlers.
They’re putting data centers in near me (they have been heavily protested, but of course that doesn’t do shit, the local government holds lots of meetings that are crowded with people saying they don’t want them, and then they shrug and approve them anyway. The last meeting I heard about they just flat out cancelled because too many people were planning on coming and speaking against it). I got a letter from my power company that they’re raising electric rates, and would I like to contribute to a fund to help pay other people’s bill?
Replace them. Either recruit a candidate or run yourself. Ignoring your voters should have consequences.
Oh I know exactly how I’m voting next election, but the problem is that I live in a conservative area and these dumb fuckers wouldn’t vote for their own self interest if you held a gun to their heads, because if they vote for things that benefit them then a brown person or someone on disability might also benefit.
This conundrum is why America has been continuously turning into a shit hole for the lower classes. It goes all the way back to right after the civil rights movement. By the early 70s, most public pools were filled with concrete (supplemented via private country club pools of course) and white private schools were opened up all over the South to exclude blacks. These examples are just a small part of what has been going on over the last 50+ years.
the bigger issue is that education is mostly underfunded, or defunded. defunded is where gop do it to rural areas. even in places that are blue can be underfunded. as i see them still using the same version of books like 10+years ago without much updates, plus if you looking at how they are shuffling students around to make sure the funding for the budget, if the student is struggling.
Guess what? It was defunded because the money got poured into private schools and it doesn’t help public schools in America rely on local property taxes, so low income schools get less money due to the property taxes netting less money.
we got a nearby public/private school that is a christian prep school, they get all the new funding and are under construction for new buildings. the public schools dont ahve those resources. i dont think this is those that take private vouchers since we are in a blue area, but the difference is staggering, if they get more funding they have better chances of prepping thier students for college. while the hs i went to only had a small handfull of students that were truly “successful”, they had classes where they shunt underperforming students as a “babysat” class, usually its a class about random subjects.
MAGAts want all to suffer, including themselves, if it also means that POCs, women, LGBTQ+, foreigners, leftists, liberals, and other never-Trumpers suffer.
some of them dont even votes, even magats.
most of them been bought off, even if they arnt seeking re-election, they ram through the approval after getting a hefty fee for themselves.
Not to sidestep it, but at what point is doing personal solar a better deal, if you own that is
Unfortunately I rent an apartment. I’d love to do a solar array on my balcony, but it’s small and faces north so I don’t think it would be cost effective.
Is electricity where you are much cheaper at night?
It’s the same rate regardless of the time of day.
Almost every provider these days has time of use rate plans available, at least in urban areas.
sad to read that.
Here in Ontario, the rates are lower at night and during the weekends (a little less than half).
https://www.hydroone.com/rates-and-billing/rates-and-charges/electricity-pricing-and-costs
How the fuck should a loan program help paying for monthly recurring costs?!
Because in the summer people run the AC more than they can afford and rack up like $300 bills when their off-summer average would normally be like $70. The loan programs are more like a deferred payment plan where they will cap the individual monthly payment at $150 or something, and then just push the surplus onto other future bills. Then usually when you close the account you owe them a bunch of money still, and that’s when they start doing things like offering to set you up with loan services.
Well, in the past (and the present in many places) perpetual unrepayable debts were used as a way to implement slavery without calling it slavery. They call it debt peonage. You know, food for thought.
the more I’m debt you get the more you owe them,
Short term it pads the companies books a bit more by adding an asset on top of the revenue. Medium term it’s a perpetual impairment generator. The executives are just planning to cash out before the inevitable happens.
“Capitalism breeds innovation”
Meanwhile we have monthly installments for monthly installments.
Have you heard of the concept of company towns?
It helps people who can still pay on average but have an unexpected cost which, due to higher bills, now pushes them into the red.
I guess they cover you for a while until you figure it out. It’s better than nothing ig.
It’s really not. What it does is trap these people in endless debt. Now we don’t know any details about these loans, but there’s no way in hell the customers aren’t going to be paying fees and interest. A loan of $40 will be a loan of $100 the next month and so on. This is a way to make extra off of the people who have nothing.
In the corporate world, if you are taking on debt to fund operations, that’s an indicator that your business is circling the drain. The same applies to personal finance.
There was an article I read a while ago that kind of explained it. Basically, the increased datacenter demand forces the grid operator to build more capacity, which requires money. I think there are meetings where they decide how it is distributed across all their corporate and resident ratepayers. Basically the lobbyists argue that the since this new capacity technically benefits rate payers in the form of more capacity, they should take a share of it. Even though none of us are actually going to be using that capacity…
And it doesn’t help at all that the grid companies are monopolies
Depends on the market too, some US states have a requirement that if the power company has to increase capacity, it’s on the power company’s dime.
But correct me if I’m wrong if the data centers are the cause of the electrical increase then shouldn’t they be offering to relieve the city of the cost because they’re the source? Like if I wanted to run 3kw of electricity on a 220v outlet with a laboratory grade vacuum pump for an hour, I would need to pay more for my electrical bill for my house only, right? My neighbors wouldn’t see a spike, I would see a spike.
My neighbors using their central air have a higher bill than me because they use more, that’s always how it’s been.
If they’re the cause they should have to pay more than the rest of us. If they’re using more energy, they should have to pay more, if they can’t pay to do upfront costs with the energy companies maybe they shouldn’t be building them. 🤣🤣🤣🤣 It makes you wonder who the hell is selling these people predatory contracts.
They’re paying for every kilowatt-hour they use, same as us. They are just a different ‘class’ of ratepayer (i.e. a bigger customer). The reason prices go up is not entirely just because of demand, but because there’s not enough supply, and the prices go up to cover for the cost to build it. The way I understand it is that some board has to decide how to distribute the increase in rates across their customers in order to meet the extra revenue, and the higher classes of ratepayers know that if their rate went up, that would be millions lost. So they hire lobbyists to convince the grid company to shift the cost to residential tax payers, and since neither you are me is going to march to the electric company and demand a fairer distribution, they end up shifting ‘some’ of it to us.
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Isn’t sharing the bill while a small group profits exactly how capitalism works?
I absolutely cannot figure this out. Isn’t a kwh the same price for everyone? Why would a data center pay less? (I’m not asking anyone to justify the poor decisions of energy companies)
It’s more that everyone pays more including the data center even. It could also be related to non-generation costs such as building additional distribution infra which can be regulated as a shared cost even though the data center pays for all extra generation.
Same as with RAM prices. There is a limited supply and the datacenters are hogging it, possibly willing to pay extra because the entire bubble depends on MORE MORE MORE, or willing to bulk purchase the entire contingent in advance.
Now if you are a power supplier you find yourself in the comfortable position of being financially courted by the datacenter corps, and you have a captured audience of consumers who rely on you supplying them, who you can now justifiably bleed out, and if they cant pay you just sell it to the datacenter after all.
That is actually very sick behavior.
To you or I, surely, but to an MBA it’s just business as usual.
Capitalism is essentially based on the concept that everyone doing whatever they believe is in their best interest will magically balance itself out and achieve the most-efficient outcome, instead of the most self-serving and greedy criminals and psychopaths colluding to exploit and deceive the masses, accrue the lions share, and enslave everyone else.
It’s basically a religiously-dogmatic mental illness that has no place beyond the 19th Century, but the criminals and psychopaths used their wealth to exploit and deceive the masses… so here we are. May the greediest psychopath win!
One might not have to buy (i.e. pay), or buy as much, if one has solar or even just a stack of batteries to get electricity during the off periods.
This is America.
Isn’t a kwh the same price for everyone?
Perversely, no. Large industrial users often get a bulk rate that’s cheaper than the household rate.
Happy cake day, BTW.
Isn’t a kwh the same price for everyone?
Not sure why you’d assume this
People tend to like to imagine the world is fair and just.
Definitely a smart move letting those power utilities be privatised, even a regulation forcing cost price power for residents would have been better than full privatisation. I’m so glad my state never got sucked into letting that happen here.
Fortunately, Oregon seems to have figured out how to handle this. This was in my feed, literally right under this post.
but reducing customers rate by 1.3% isnt that much, it should be 30%
Our rates haven’t gone up by much lately. The rates have kept more in line with the stupid inflation.
As the other commenter said, they have a limited supply and are expecting us plebeians to be priced out and go without. It’s already happening: https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/articles/virginia-county-tells-workers-switch-002400860.html
If it’s anything like it is here in Victoria (Australia); the price per MWh is recalculated based on supply/demand on a 5 minute basis:
https://www.aemo.com.au/aemo/data/nem/priceanddemand/PRICE_AND_DEMAND_202607_VIC1.csv
That’s because when supply outruns demand, surplus electricity is basically worthless and wholesalers need to pay someone to take it - we have long stretches of time, even during winter, where our domestic solar production saturates the demand, resulting in our Feed-in tariffs (what homes get paid for surplus production) has dropped to 1c/kWh, except for certain edge cases).
The bulk of the cost incurred is due to peak-energy generation (gas turbine, I believe?) ramping up to cover peak evening times.
These costs are aggregated and amortised over total demand, to balance out people’s energy bills.
This has been a bit of a tangent, but I found this interesting when I first learned it, and just wanted to share!
Clout. Aura. Bargaining force. Call it whatever you want, really. Corporations are big, they have capital, capital is power. They can hire people to influence politics, pushing for people who are on their side to get elected by funding campaigns, and naturally bribe people on the down low.
Stick, along with the other people served by their provider, most likely don’t have the ability to pay people to lobby for them full time. Most people barely have the money to keep their personal economy going, and spend a significant portion of their time just making that happen. As a result, the corporations who are benefiting from this sit on all the power, because they can influence public opinion as well, painting their politics as beneficial to private individuals, even if that’s a complete lie.
That is why democracy and capitalism are fundamentally incompatible. Workers could band together and claim power, but they’re kept in situations where doing that just isn’t feasible.
Things won’t get better without some kind of revolution. The balance of power is tipped so far in favour of the corporations that no matter how much time or money workers spend (neither of which we have) trying to better things, they’ll never get even close to what the corpos can swing with.
Everyone on the power exchange. Consumers don’t pay the exchange price. They pay a premium to the company that transforms exchange power to household power on a virtual sheet of paper.
Folks who are saying the price is going up because of demand are technically right but it’s kinda misleading. People get mad when they don’t understand their bills so I wanna add to that:
With more demand in the system, more distribution equipment is used and will need more maintenance. Your electric bill has fixed fees and usage fees. The fixed fees include the cost of capital upgrades, which cover these costs. It’s not a direct 1:1 cost for each connection, as the upstream feed capacity needs to increase too.
Cost per KW may go up too, it depends on the way your utility is set up. Time of day pricing is meant to encourage offsetting costs and sometimes large customers pay proportional to the contribution to peak demand.
It doesn’t help that this increase in demand comes when so much of the grid is old as fuck in north america. But we live in interesting times.
Data centers forcing grid upgrades is all the more reason their rates should be higher. They should be paying 100% of those capital upgrade costs, too!
Okay these are literally things that you can vote for you need to find out who regulates energy rates and get on their ass
they get a wholesale/bulk rate which is far cheaper than residential, we atually pay for any datacenter, business in the end.
It may well be the same price for the data center too, but now that there’s significantly more load on the network and there’ve been no changes to network capacity the price is being adjusted to reconcile the new demand with existing supply.
Debt trickles down, money trickles up
Data centers have lobbying force the citizens lack, they can negotiate for better prices.
Data centers also force power grid upgrades, the cost of which gets unfairly distributed to consumers.
And, data centers have the technology to take advantage of peak pricing, running on low power when electricity costs more and amping up when the price is more favorable.
People need to fight back in force, write their representatives, their energy companies, show up to town halls and increase public pressure to make sure data centers are paying their fair share.
lobbying as in bribing the govorner here and there, the council members to fast track it before people can block it.
I emailed the department of energy asking it why the cost of the data centers energy is being pushed onto the people and I also mentioned how it seems like a direct conflict of interest.
You think those clowns care about your email?? Probably got put in the trash as soon as it arrived.
just like emailing or contacting your senator/house member is just as futile, they likely dont read it, or have an assistant to filter it out.
Still worth a try asking, right?
Yeah… Burn the data center down…
