Samuel Johnson: Good evening, and welcome to bout three of six. Tonight we go underground, to the water beneath the town and the air above it. I am Samuel Johnson, and I am in a terrible position, sir.
Niccolo Machiavelli: The Doctor’s position is terrible because the honest man tonight is a Whig.
Samuel Johnson: John Locke is a Whig, sir, and the first Whig was the Devil. Yet he defends the common well against the mighty, and I find I must cheer for him through clenched teeth. Somebody fetch Boswell and have him write that down, for it will never happen again.
Niccolo Machiavelli: And in the far corner stands my man, Jeremy Bentham, who would weigh his own mother if the scale were accurate.
Samuel Johnson: Mister Bentham has called the rights of man nonsense upon stilts. Sir, I once kicked a stone to refute a bishop, and I shall kick this desk to refute a utilitarian.
Niccolo Machiavelli: You will break your foot on the desk, Doctor, and Bentham will enter the pain in a ledger.
Samuel Johnson: Consider the stakes. A large warehouse draws about three thousand gallons of water a day. The typical data center in one study draws one hundred twenty one thousand.
Niccolo Machiavelli: In The Prince I praised Cesare Borgia, who gave a cruel minister the hard work, then had him cut in two in the square at Cesena so the people would feel satisfied. When the wells run low, my friends, watch for whoever gets cut in two.
Samuel Johnson: That is the most disgraceful thing ever said in this booth.
Niccolo Machiavelli: It is chapter seven, Doctor, and it worked beautifully.
Samuel Johnson: John Locke, Jeremy Bentham, the floor is yours, gentlemen. Draw only what you need from it.
Niccolo Machiavelli: Mister Bentham, count everything, and count the Doctor last.
John Locke: Thank you, Doctor Johnson. I say a man may draw from the common well only if he leaves enough, and as good, for his neighbor.
Jeremy Bentham: Thank you, Signor Machiavelli, I have counted you already. I say enough and as good is a slogan, and I should like the figures to three decimal places.
John Locke: My opponent would sell his neighbor’s well if the sum came out in favor.
Jeremy Bentham: Mister Locke would let a town go thirsty rather than do arithmetic in public.
John Locke: This conversation is brought to you by PhilosophersTalk.com, where thinkers discuss!
Jeremy Bentham: Created by AITalkerApp.com, create your own animated conversations. Link in the description!
John Locke: I am John Locke, author of the Two Treatises of Government. I hold that a man makes a thing his own by mixing his labor with what lies in common. But only where there is enough, and as good, left in common for others. And I wrote that nothing was made by God for man to spoil or destroy. Tonight I intend to hold a data center to both of those rules.
Jeremy Bentham: And I am Jeremy Bentham, founder of utilitarianism. I hold that the greatest happiness of the greatest number is the measure of right and wrong. I called natural rights simple nonsense, and imprescriptible rights nonsense upon stilts. I also had my body preserved and put on display at University College London, so I can confirm the arrangement has given me roughly eleven units of happiness and the students considerably fewer.
John Locke: Then let us count what is being drawn. A large warehouse uses about three thousand gallons of water a day. The typical data center in one study draws one hundred twenty one thousand. Large ones draw between one and five million, which is the water of a town of ten to fifty thousand people. One Google site in Iowa withdrew three point nine million gallons a day and consumed two point eight million. Consumed means it rose as vapor and never came back. Most of it came from municipal drinking water systems, the same pipes the town drinks from.
Jeremy Bentham: Splendid figures, and I adore a figure, but you have chased the wrong animal. Data centers consumed about seventeen billion gallons directly in 2023. The power stations that feed them consumed about two hundred eleven billion. Twelve parts in thirteen of the water is at the power plant. And a well designed dry cooling system can match the evaporative kind in most climates while using almost none. So the cure for thirst is an engineer and a price, not a warehouse.
John Locke: I grant the power station, and I will come to it. But mark when the thirst arrives. Demand for cooling water can triple in hot weather. That is the very week the town is rationing its lawns. A man who takes most from the common well on the hottest day of the year is not sharing it.
Jeremy Bentham: Then let me read you a better author. Mister Locke, in his own Second Treatise, asks who can doubt that the water in the pitcher is his only who drew it out. The data center drew it, sir. By your own book, it owns the pitcher, the water, and very possibly the well. I give that argument a nine.
John Locke: Read one more line, Mister Bentham, since you have the book open. I wrote that no one is injured by another man’s drink when he has a whole river of the same water left. The pitcher was mine only because the river was full. When the aquifer falls, the proviso closes the tap.
Jeremy Bentham: A seven, then. Revised downward for context.
John Locke: Now the air, which no one can put in a pitcher at all. One estimate puts the health damage from data center pollution at five billion dollars in 2023. Projections for 2028 run between eleven point seven and twenty point nine billion a year, with about thirteen hundred early deaths. More than ninety percent of it comes from distant power plants, and some communities carry over two hundred times the burden of others. I wrote that men unite to preserve their lives, liberties and estates, which I called by the general name property. A man’s lungs are his property. Nobody asked his consent.
Jeremy Bentham: Now I shall state Mister Locke’s case at full strength, chiefly so I can demonstrate how quickly it deflates. He says the aquifer and the air are held in common. He says a private taker may draw only while plenty remains, and may never waste what he draws. He says nobody may take a man’s health without his consent. It is a beautiful argument, and like most beautiful things it has never once been measured.
John Locke: That was accurate, and I am surprised you could stay on stilts throughout.
Jeremy Bentham: Stilts are excellent for wading, Mister Locke, particularly in a drought.
John Locke: And here is yours, stated fairly before I take it apart. Mister Bentham says a gallon is a gallon wherever it is drawn. He says the pain of a thirsty town and the pleasure of a million people using these machines can be weighed on one scale. He says a price set to the harm will do more good than any rule about warehouses. That is honest arithmetic. My objection is to what he is willing to add together.
Jeremy Bentham: Then watch me add. Intensity of the harm, a four. Duration, a six. Extent, millions of users, call it a ninety thousand. Propinquity, rather distant, since most of the smoke is at the power plant. The answer favors the data center, with a remainder of one asthmatic in Ohio, which I carry to the next page.
John Locke: You cannot carry a dead man to the next page, sir. You cannot add his lungs to a faster search result and call the total happiness. Some things are not on the scale, because they were never yours to put there.
Jeremy Bentham: That is your best line tonight, and I score it a twelve. But notice what your rule does. Under the warehouse limit, the data center must make its own power. The smoke you object to moves from the distant power station to the fence line, as it already has in Memphis. Your property in your lungs gets closer to the chimney, not further.
John Locke: Then at least the neighbor can see whose chimney it is, and bring his action at law. I will concede you one thing honestly. Where the river is full, no one is injured by the drink. A data center beside the Great Lakes takes nothing my neighbor needs. A warehouse rule that ignores that is a blunt instrument.
Jeremy Bentham: A concession! I shall have it framed beside my skeleton. And while we are being blunt, why a warehouse at all? A golf course drinks too, and serves a few hundred members. A brewery drinks, a hospital drinks. Your rule singles out the one building that happens to look like a box.
John Locke: Because the box is pretending to be its own neighbor, sir. It asks to be zoned as a warehouse and then drinks like a town. Hold it to the description it gave when it asked for the permit. And here is what neither of us can measure. Most operators report only limited, aggregated figures on their water. Many do not track it at all. There are almost no air monitors at the fence lines. You want a sum, Mister Bentham, and the numbers are locked in a drawer.
Jeremy Bentham: I admit it freely. A felicific calculus under a nondisclosure agreement is a blind man’s abacus. I cannot weigh what they will not show me. Make them publish every gallon and every ounce of smoke, and I will price it to the penny.
John Locke: And while you wait for the figures, the town waits for its water.
Jeremy Bentham: One forecast says data centers will need up to one point four billion gallons of new supply a day by 2030. That is more than New York City drinks. It is a forecast, Mister Locke.
John Locke: So was the drought, sir, until it arrived!
Jeremy Bentham: THEN PRICE THE DROUGHT!
John Locke: YOU CANNOT PRICE MY LUNGS!
Jeremy Bentham: I CAN PRICE ANYTHING!
John Locke: THAT IS THE PROBLEM, SIR!
Jeremy Bentham: STILTS!
John Locke: SPOILAGE!
Jeremy Bentham: PROVISO!
John Locke: PANOPTICON!
Jeremy Bentham: SLOGAN!
John Locke: ABACUS!
Jeremy Bentham: NINE OUT OF TEN!
John Locke: If you found this useful, please like and subscribe. Mister Bentham will tell you he has measured the happiness it brings you. He is the only philosopher in history who calculated that his own corpse would improve the mood of a university, and then had it stuffed and seated in a glass case to prove the point. The students have been waiting two centuries for the happiness to arrive.
Jeremy Bentham: Yes, like and subscribe, and I estimate the pleasure at roughly four units. And remember that Mister Locke wrote that every man has property in his own person, and then bought shares in the Royal African Company. He believes in natural rights so deeply that he invested in their opposite. I have assigned his consistency a two, and that is generous.
John Locke: Doctor Johnson, I return the floor to you, though I know you think me a Whig.
Jeremy Bentham: Signor Machiavelli, back to the booth, and I have assigned your commentary a solid nine.
Samuel Johnson: Thank you, Mister Locke. It pains me, sir, it physically pains me, but I score this bout for the Whig. He kept the neighbor’s well full and the neighbor’s lungs his own.
Niccolo Machiavelli: Thank you, Mister Bentham, and a nine is generous. My card goes to Bentham, who turned Locke’s own pitcher against him in the first round.
Samuel Johnson: A pitcher is not a river, sir, and Mister Locke said so in the very next line!
Niccolo Machiavelli: In The Prince I wrote that men judge more by the eye than by the hand. The audience saw the pitcher, Doctor, and nobody saw the river.
Samuel Johnson: Then let me teach them something. My Dictionary defines a network as any thing reticulated or decussated, at equal distances, with interstices between the intersections.
Niccolo Machiavelli: Doctor, nobody asked, and nobody understood.
Samuel Johnson: It is the grid, sir! I defined the grid a century before anyone plugged a machine into it, and nobody has thanked me!
Niccolo Machiavelli: After the Medici dismissed me, I spent my days snaring thrushes and playing trich trach with a butcher and a miller at the inn. In the evening I put on courtly robes to converse with the ancients. Doctor, you are the first ancient who would not stop talking.
Samuel Johnson: Sir, I shall take that as the compliment it was not intended to be.
Niccolo Machiavelli: I will make one concession. Bentham admitted that he cannot do a sum with sealed numbers. It is the only honest thing a utilitarian has ever said.
Samuel Johnson: Mark it well, then, for the companies will not open the drawer until somebody makes them.
Niccolo Machiavelli: And somebody will be cut in two in the square before they do.
Samuel Johnson: Next time, William Blackstone and Otto von Bismarck argue over whether a farm may be taken for a power line. Blackstone is an English lawyer, so I shall only disapprove of him mildly.
Niccolo Machiavelli: And Bismarck is my man, Doctor, so bring a helmet.
Samuel Johnson: Until then, I remain your impartial servant.
Niccolo Machiavelli: And I remain unemployed, but do come back.
