this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2025
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Spiking demand is sending energy bills skyrocketing, while the governor threatens to pull the state from the grid.

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[–] JBar2@lemmy.world 27 points 3 days ago (3 children)

I haven't looked into this, but why aren't states creating a very expensive tier for energy consumption?

And if the problem is that it would impact other businesses, why not narrowly tailor such a tier that AI companies would be the ones impacted?

If it's going to take infrastructure to support AI, then the AI companies should fund it via taxes.

Oh, right, that's socialism according to the GOP

[–] psivchaz@reddthat.com 6 points 3 days ago

Regulating demand like this is supposed to be like the one thing a free market is good at, isn't it? Supply can't go up, so prices go up until demand evens out. Am I supposed to believe that all the free market stuff I hear about isn't working?!

[–] Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 4 points 2 days ago

most of them are based in red states for a reason, little to no regulation, and the voters arnt likely to push back against these companies.

[–] LodeMike@lemmy.today 3 points 3 days ago

Actually this is due to laws passed by bypartisan congresses. Look up how fucked up the U.S. electricity regulations are.

[–] MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip 4 points 2 days ago

Make the company pay for it.

[–] PattyMcB@lemmy.world 8 points 3 days ago

GOOD. Fuck this garbage FOMO

[–] LodeMike@lemmy.today 7 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I can't wait for the collapse. Personally, I only use it for "search" for very specific things (like very specific coding things that don't need a 2000 word artucle), because search engines are garbage now (because of AI).

[–] Deceptichum@quokk.au 14 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Search engines turned to trash long before AI. It was SEO that killed search engines.

[–] Ascrod@midwest.social 4 points 2 days ago

On top of that is Prabhakar Raghavan, the former head of ads at Google, who was made head of search in 2019.

[–] Hestia@hexbear.net 6 points 3 days ago

It was intentionally enshittified so you’d spend more time on it, and they could shove more ads in your face

[–] Jimmycakes@lemmy.world 4 points 3 days ago

New plants should have gone up decades ago. This is what happens when you don't invest in infrastructure

[–] DefinitelyNotAPhone@hexbear.net 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

I sure do love living in a fascist shithole where dumbfuck VC investors can be conned into investing trillions into deadend AI startups that require enough power to keep the eastern seaboard topped off, but the idea of publicly owned utilities that could at least think ahead more than 3 years and build redundant power plants to handle spikes in demand is literally unthinkable to the neoliberal political hegemony because clearly letting investors scalp energy prices for profit is more efficient! Please don't look at literally any privatized utility company's record on handling anything ever, even just day-to-day operations!