Andrew Damitio 🏗️ (🏬🚝☢️🔆🔋♨️)

Environmental Economics and Policy | Municipal Reform | PNW Lover | Exiled in DC | Techno-Optimist | Pro-Economic Growth | Opinions Mine, Not My Employer's |

[Andrew Damitio 🏗️ (🏬🚝☢️🔆🔋♨️) @AndrewDamitio]

There's a monument in Portland to a tree planting happening without an Environmental Impact Statement, design review, or public comment taking place.

[Andrew Damitio 🏗️ (🏬🚝☢️🔆🔋♨️) @AndrewDamitio]

Oregon law allows its state housing agency to withhold itemization of construction costs for units it subsidizes, making it difficult for policymakers or researchers to know the cost drivers of affordable housing construction.

https://t.co/P9jjM0zEHB

[Andrew Damitio 🏗️ (🏬🚝☢️🔆🔋♨️) @AndrewDamitio]

@robbysoave The most common complaints in public hearings regarding data centers are perceptions that the development is being done in secret by big companies.

It's complaints about powerful people.

Environmental concerns are brought up second.

https://t.co/388ktFFP09

[Andy Hall @ahall_research]

In new, ongoing research studying the transcripts of city council meetings, we find that the most common complaints about data centers are about process and transparency. Very consistent with @jasminewsun 's account.

[Robinson Meyer @robinsonmeyer]

There’s a strong “We’re all trying to find the guy who did this” element to large US tech companies discovering that the modern information environment is chaotic, low trust, driven by whim, does not reward truth-finding, is not self-correcting, given to faddish obsessions, etc

[Andrew Damitio 🏗️ (🏬🚝☢️🔆🔋♨️) @AndrewDamitio]

@Penguin57a That's also a really good point.

Tech companies took moderation stances against the far-right a decade ago, and were also known for their corporate diversity initiatives, anchoring the right.

And now Elon and Larry Ellison and others have supported Trump, angering the left.

[Andrew Damitio 🏗️ (🏬🚝☢️🔆🔋♨️) @AndrewDamitio]

Defenders of data centers, including myself, focus too much on debunking false fears about water use, land use, or contributions to rising electricity bills.

We broadly miss the point that data center opposition is fundamentally a revolt against tech titans and corporate power.

[Andrew Damitio 🏗️ (🏬🚝☢️🔆🔋♨️) @AndrewDamitio]

The crux of the issue is less about whether AI is good for society or not, but rather who will own and control the AI models, and the American public is loudly saying that they don't trust the tech giants with that power.

I don't think most policymakers understand that yet.

[Andrew Damitio 🏗️ (🏬🚝☢️🔆🔋♨️) @AndrewDamitio]

Somewhere between enabling mass sextortion of minors, having scams proliferate, intentionally promoting divisive content to fuel engagement, allowing slop to dominate feeds, and integrating with vices like gambling and porn, big tech could have considered their reputations.

[Nicholas Birkhead @energynicholas]

Our inability to quickly site, permit, and build high voltage transmission in the United States makes me apoplectic. We have the deepest capital markets on earth and incredible engineering and construction talent. Yet we’re crippled by our balkanized and sclerotic institutions.

[Andrew Damitio 🏗️ (🏬🚝☢️🔆🔋♨️) @AndrewDamitio]

"I want good schools and healthcare instead of a big military budget!"

Well, the US spends as much on education as peer nations, and a heck of a lot more on healthcare.

The US's problem isn't a lack of spending on social services, it's implementation.

[Andrew Damitio 🏗️ (🏬🚝☢️🔆🔋♨️) @AndrewDamitio]

The US government did subsidize early SpaceX development through industrial policy like the Commercial Crew Program .

Private capital's willingness to fund an unprofitable SpaceX functioned similarly to capital controls in east Asian industrial policy, but without govt nudging.

[Andrew Damitio 🏗️ (🏬🚝☢️🔆🔋♨️) @AndrewDamitio]

Industrial policy often requires firms to run at a loss subsidized by the state, provided the firm can prove it's meeting learning milestones.

To that end, SpaceX is a success story of American industrial policy, with private credit subsidizing losses as the firm develops.

[Andrew Damitio 🏗️ (🏬🚝☢️🔆🔋♨️) @AndrewDamitio]

While private credit gets money from pension funds, technically meaning the general public is subsidizing SpaceX's industrial learning, there's a difference between VC's investing in a firm and the entire American public buying into the overvaluation, bailing out private capital.

[Andrew Damitio 🏗️ (🏬🚝☢️🔆🔋♨️) @AndrewDamitio]

Great article by @advaitarun_.

The early inclusion of SpaceX into index funds due to its absurd overvaluation allows early investors to pass their risk onto passive investors.

Also, SpaceX's shares don't give shareholders control of the company.

https://t.co/rZu0fEQpo8

[Andrew Damitio 🏗️ (🏬🚝☢️🔆🔋♨️) @AndrewDamitio]

Industrial policy often requires firms to run at a loss subsidized by the state, provided the firm can prove it's meeting learning milestones.

To that end, SpaceX is a success story of American industrial policy, with private credit subsidizing losses as the firm develops.

[Andrew Damitio 🏗️ (🏬🚝☢️🔆🔋♨️) @AndrewDamitio]

Deindustrialization might leave nations strategically vulnerable and threaten innovation, but subsidizing industry to protect jobs and production without enforcing industrial learning benchmarks creates an expensive outlay without curing strategic vulnerabilities or innovating.

[Andrew Damitio 🏗️ (🏬🚝☢️🔆🔋♨️) @AndrewDamitio]

A reminder:

Subsidizing industry to preserve supplier networks and process knowledge doesn't inherently create competitive industry.

America's protected steelmakers may still exist, but they're incapable of making high-quality GOES to make transformers.

https://t.co/Z7cpoXM9bS

[Robinson Meyer @robinsonmeyer]

It’s forgotten now, but the controversy over cell towers ended not because phone companies won thousands of local permitting fights or the public saw the light … but because Congress passed a law that seriously restricted towns’ authority over them. https://t.co/YJeUAtKz0L

[Santi Ruiz @rSanti97]

As @pahlkadot has highlighted, veterans preference has this weird reverse property of polarizing hiring managers against veterans. Hard to imagine a more vivid example.

https://t.co/XR9W5Nl3bp