Our “First Principles Series” is an ongoing awareness effort by Beacon to restore our nation’s commitment to those principles of free markets, individual liberty, and limited government that have made America the best nation in the history of the world. Often, politicians eager to appease constituents can stray from these principles. And voters can be misled into believing that policies violating these principles are in their best interest when they’re not. This series is designed to set the record straight and make the case for standing up for our most important principles, even when it might be politically expedient to ignore them. Read our entire “First Principles Series” here.
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Hating on data centers is all the rage these days. Politicians at all levels, from Congress to city halls, have called for moratoriums or outright bans on building new data centers. Extremists have resorted to their physical destruction across the country.
(Ironically, much of this hostility proliferates on social media, some even using AI, which exists only due to data centers, to write posts and create memes. But I digress.)
Calls for curbing data centers aren’t just theoretical. Governments are beginning to take action. Beacon recently filed a lawsuit on behalf of a cryptocurrency mining business after Hawkins County banned all data centers to prevent its business from opening.
Regardless of how you feel about data centers, it’s wrong to ask the government to outright ban them. The government should not—and in this case, constitutionally cannot—outright ban entire types of businesses it doesn’t like. Today, that ban might apply to a business you dislike; tomorrow, it might apply to yours.
Opposing bans like these doesn’t make you a shill for Big Tech, however. On the flipside, government shouldn’t tip the scales in favor of data centers or any type of business, for that matter. Politicians should avoid heaping taxpayer money on data centers. And it certainly shouldn’t try to keep those incentives hidden like this one a few years ago in Montgomery County. Let them start, grow, and even die based on market forces, not subsidies.
Opposing data center bans also doesn’t mean that property owners can’t be protected from negative impacts therefrom. We can allow data centers to exist while keeping the courts open for nuisance lawsuits against bad actors who infringe upon protections like water rights when other property owners are actually harmed by them.
Data centers are here to stay. With a properly limited government, we can benefit from their existence without harming taxpayers, property owners, and local residents.