Data centers are noisy and use absurd amounts of water and electricity. They provide no benefit to the communities they're in beyond the construction jobs to build them and a handful of high-paying jobs to run them. These communities have very little say in stopping them, and no ability to get rid of them once they're built.
How would these be regulated under AnCap? I don't see any way other than calling the noise and pollution they cause a violation of NAP, which would allow the community to sabotage them, eventually forcing their owners to build them in remote locations. This would be self-limiting because if they had to also build their own roads, electricity, and water infrastructure, the cost would be prohibitive.
An AnCap society is bound together in a web of mutually beneficial agreements that contain clauses to not violate the NAP (pollution, fraud, theft, assault, murder, etc.).
Ostensibly, no one would be permitted to build facilities that violate the NAP.
Parties of a mutually beneficial agreements want their agreement to be enforced.
The parties of the agreements cooperatively choose an impartial agreement enforcer to oversee.
To reduce risk, impartial agreement enforcer includes NAP Clauses and Stipulations for the parties to refrain from violation the NAP (pollution, fraud, theft, assault, murder, etc.).
To participate in an AnCap society, individuals and organizations enter into numerous agreements with NAP Clauses.
The larger the organization, the more agreements they have, the more bound up they are into the web.
Anyone who wants to build facilities, in order to avoid the punishing stipulations, must uphold the NAP.
So when the data center is up and running, making unpleasant noise and raising the cost of water and electricity and generally degrading the quality of life near them, that violates NAP and the local residents should be able to sabotage it. Alternatively, the data center owners could negotiate with them and pay them off, for example everyone gets $100,000 annually as compensation for having to put up with it.
I'm aware that the data center owners could spend more money to mitigate the noise, and could offer monetary compensation to the local residents to cover their increased water and electricity bills. Obviously this could be negotiated to everyone's liking.
What if the data center owners decide it would be cheaper to just hire armed guards? Do the local residents have no choice but to move, or can they view the noise and increased utility costs as a violation of NAP, and respond by killing the guards and sabotaging the data center?
The noise and pollution are indeed a violation of the NAP. In order to get around this they would need to "Rent" the silence from those who's property is near enough to be affected.
Alternately, they might make something similar to the industrial-revolution's "Factory Towns". Like you said, they'd need to build their own roads, electricity, water infrastructure etc. Maybe that is the cost of operating such a large scale undertaking. It was done once before, entire settlements, towns and economies being created from nothing by a large investment of capital.
But look at the companies building these datacenters. It's hardly a small, middle-class field. The corporations making these damn things are certainly wealthy enough to invest in building a whole town around the endeavour. I say let them. Then anybody that wants to live near them can do so, and do it at a commensurately lower cost due to the inconvenience of the noise being factored in. Everyone wins.
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u/drebelx Jul 31 '26
An AnCap society is bound together in a web of mutually beneficial agreements that contain clauses to not violate the NAP (pollution, fraud, theft, assault, murder, etc.).
Ostensibly, no one would be permitted to build facilities that violate the NAP.