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Thomas Jefferson: My name is Thomas Jefferson. I drafted the Declaration of Independence, served as the third President, and spent my career arguing that government exists to serve the people who live under it, not the interests that profit from it. I am here today to talk about electricity bills and who pays them.
Alexander Hamilton: My name is Alexander Hamilton. I built America’s financial system from nothing, wrote most of the Federalist Papers, and created the economic infrastructure that transformed a failing experiment into the most powerful nation on earth. I am here because the data center debate has been dominated by fear and misinformation, and while I have no patience for most of it, the question of electricity costs is one where the concerns are legitimate and the conversation is worth having honestly.
Thomas Jefferson: Hamilton has opened by conceding that electricity concerns are legitimate, which is new for him. I am going to mark this moment because I do not expect it to last.
Alexander Hamilton: It will last as long as you argue honestly, Jefferson. The electricity question is different from the water question because the water crisis is largely manufactured from misleading statistics. Data centers use less than half of one percent of American freshwater. But electricity is different. Data centers consumed one hundred and seventy-six terawatt hours in 2023. That was four point four percent of all American electricity. By 2030, projections suggest that could reach twelve percent. And unlike water, where the actual local impacts have been negligible, the electricity impacts are showing up on real bills for real people.
Thomas Jefferson: I appreciate the honesty, Hamilton, and I intend to hold you to it. Because the numbers are worse than you have just summarized. In Virginia, data centers consumed twenty-six percent of the total electricity supply in 2023. One quarter of all electricity in the state. In the region served by the grid operator called PJM, data centers contributed to a nine point three billion dollar increase in the capacity market. The result is that a grandmother in western Maryland is paying eighteen dollars more per month on her electricity bill. In Ohio, it is sixteen dollars more. Communities near major data center clusters in Virginia, Texas, and Georgia are seeing rate increases of eight to fifteen percent. And by 2028, the Natural Resources Defense Council estimates that an average family in a thirteen-state region anchored by Virginia could be paying seventy dollars more per month. Seventy dollars, Hamilton.
Alexander Hamilton: Those numbers are real, and I am not going to pretend otherwise. The question is what you do about them. Jefferson’s answer, as always, is to stop building. My answer is to build more. More generation. More transmission. More grid capacity. The demand is real because the economic value of what data centers produce is real. The answer to rising demand is not to suppress it. It is to meet it with expanded supply.
Thomas Jefferson: And who pays for that expanded supply, Hamilton?
Alexander Hamilton: Initially, ratepayers share the cost of grid expansion, as they always have for every new source of demand. But the data center revenue, the tax base, the economic activity, that flows back to the community. In Loudoun County, Virginia, data centers fund half the county budget. Property taxes have been reduced every year for a decade. The electricity costs are real, but so are the revenues. Jefferson only wants you to look at one side of the ledger.
Thomas Jefferson: I want the audience to look at both sides, Hamilton. That is why I find the ledger so instructive. On one side, the grandmother in Maryland pays eighteen dollars more per month. She did not choose to host a data center. She was not consulted. She receives no direct benefit from the facility that created the demand that raised her bill. On the other side, Loudoun County, which is one of the wealthiest counties in America, enjoys lower property taxes because it hosts the largest concentration of data centers in the world. Hamilton is telling the grandmother in Maryland that she should be grateful for Loudoun County’s property tax rate. She cannot eat Loudoun County’s property tax rate.
Alexander Hamilton: That is a false framing. The grid serves the entire region. Every new source of demand, whether it is a hospital, a housing development, or a data center, contributes to the need for grid expansion. When a new hospital opens, the surrounding community absorbs some increase in grid costs. Nobody holds a town meeting about it. Nobody accuses the hospital of stealing electricity. The difference is that data centers have become a political target, and the costs that are normal and unremarkable for every other industry become scandalous when a technology company is involved.
Thomas Jefferson: The difference, Hamilton, is that a hospital serves the community where it operates. When a hospital consumes electricity, the benefit flows to the patients and families in that community. When a data center consumes twenty-six percent of Virginia’s electricity, the benefit flows to customers who live primarily somewhere else. The costs are local. The benefits are national. That is not the same as a hospital, and you know it.
Alexander Hamilton: The benefits are not exclusively national. The residents of Loudoun County have the lowest property taxes in Northern Virginia because of data centers. Their schools are fully funded. Their fire departments are equipped. Their libraries are open. Those are local benefits, paid for by data center revenue. Jefferson keeps pointing to the costs without acknowledging the revenues, and he keeps pointing to communities that do not host data centers while ignoring the communities that do and are thriving because of it.
Thomas Jefferson: Loudoun County was wealthy before data centers arrived, Hamilton. It is in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. It had infrastructure, legal resources, and negotiating capacity that allowed it to extract genuine value from the data center industry. Most communities being targeted for data centers are not Loudoun County. They are small towns in rural Georgia, Minnesota, Missouri, and Oregon. They do not have the resources to negotiate equitable terms. And the terms they receive are not equitable. But we can discuss the negotiation process another time. Let me stay on the electricity, because Hamilton has conceded the costs are real, and I want to explore what he proposes to do about them.
Alexander Hamilton: I propose building more infrastructure. More power plants, more transmission lines, more renewable generation. The demand exists because artificial intelligence is transforming the economy. You do not respond to transformative demand by blocking it. You respond by meeting it. Every industrial revolution in history has required expanded energy infrastructure. This one is no different.
Thomas Jefferson: And every industrial revolution in history has imposed costs on the communities where the infrastructure was built while sending the profits somewhere else. That is my point, Hamilton. You are proposing that the residents of rural Maryland and Ohio and Virginia pay for the grid expansion through their utility bills, so that corporations headquartered in California can operate servers that generate revenue for shareholders who have never visited those communities. That is a transfer of wealth from the many to the few, administered through the electricity bill. It is your financial system all over again, and I opposed it then for the same reasons I oppose it now.
Alexander Hamilton: Let me present Jefferson’s argument at its strongest. His best case is this. The electrical grid is a shared resource. Data centers are consuming it at a rate that raises costs for all other users. The costs fall disproportionately on residential ratepayers who had no say in whether to accept data centers in their region. The benefits flow primarily to corporations and their shareholders who are located elsewhere. This creates a tragedy of the commons in which a shared resource, grid capacity, is consumed by private actors who capture the benefits while the costs are socialized to everyone else. That is a legitimate concern, and I do not dismiss it.
Thomas Jefferson: I appreciate the accuracy.
Alexander Hamilton: What I dismiss is the conclusion Jefferson draws from it. He concludes that communities should block data centers. I conclude that communities should negotiate better terms. Require data centers to fund grid upgrades directly. Require them to build dedicated power generation. Require them to pay premium rates that reflect their actual demand. The solution is not less development. It is smarter development.
Thomas Jefferson: Now let me present Hamilton’s argument at its strongest. His best case is this. Electricity costs are real but manageable. Grid infrastructure can be expanded. Data center revenue, when properly captured through taxation and direct investment requirements, can more than offset the costs imposed on ratepayers. Blocking data centers does not lower electricity costs because the underlying demand for computing will be met somewhere else, and the community that refuses the data center loses the revenue without gaining anything. The smart move is to accept the development and negotiate terms that ensure the community captures its fair share of the value. That is a serious argument.
Alexander Hamilton: And it is the correct one.
Thomas Jefferson: And it fails because it assumes communities have the capacity to negotiate fair terms. It assumes that a part-time city council in a town of four thousand people can sit across the table from a trillion-dollar corporation and extract equitable conditions. It assumes that the negotiation happens transparently, with full information, with the community’s informed consent. And none of those assumptions hold in practice. The corporations arrive through shell companies. They require nondisclosure agreements. They threaten to take the project to the next county. The negotiation Hamilton describes, the smart development deal that captures fair value for the community, almost never happens because the power imbalance between the parties makes it impossible. Hamilton is prescribing medicine that the patient cannot obtain.
Alexander Hamilton: Then change the conditions. Provide state-level support for local negotiations. Create model contracts. Fund independent engineering reviews. Establish minimum standards for data center agreements. You do not throw out the entire concept of economic development because some negotiations are conducted badly. You improve the negotiations.
Thomas Jefferson: And there it is. Hamilton’s answer to every problem is more institutional architecture. More model contracts. More state-level oversight. More systems designed by experts to manage the affairs of communities that Hamilton does not trust to manage their own affairs. The people of Newton County, Georgia do not need model contracts from the state capital. They need the right to say no. And they need to exercise that right before their electricity bills increase by seventy dollars a month to subsidize the artificial intelligence projects of corporations that will never know their names.
Alexander Hamilton: THE RIGHT TO SAY NO WITHOUT UNDERSTANDING THE CONSEQUENCES IS NOT SELF-GOVERNANCE! IT IS SELF-HARM!
Thomas Jefferson: AND THE DEMAND THAT PEOPLE UNDERSTAND THE CONSEQUENCES YOUR WAY BEFORE THEY ARE PERMITTED TO DECIDE IS NOT DEMOCRACY! IT IS MANAGEMENT!
Alexander Hamilton: SOMEONE HAS TO MANAGE THE GRID, JEFFERSON! ELECTRICITY DOES NOT ORGANIZE ITSELF!
Thomas Jefferson: THEN MANAGE THE GRID IN A WAY THAT DOES NOT CHARGE GRANDMOTHERS IN MARYLAND EIGHTEEN DOLLARS A MONTH TO SUBSIDIZE CALIFORNIA BILLIONAIRES!
Alexander Hamilton: THE GRID SERVES EVERYONE! THE COSTS ARE SHARED BECAUSE THE BENEFITS ARE SHARED!
Thomas Jefferson: THE BENEFITS ARE NOT SHARED! THE BENEFITS ARE IN CALIFORNIA! THE COSTS ARE IN MARYLAND! AND THE GRANDMOTHER PAYING THOSE COSTS WAS NEVER ASKED WHETHER SHE WANTED TO SHARE!
Alexander Hamilton: SHE BENEFITS FROM EVERY SEARCH ENGINE QUERY, EVERY AI TOOL, EVERY PIECE OF TECHNOLOGY THOSE DATA CENTERS ENABLE!
Thomas Jefferson: SHE DID NOT ASK FOR THOSE BENEFITS AT THAT PRICE! AND THE PRICE WAS SET WITHOUT HER CONSENT!
Alexander Hamilton: CONSENT DOES NOT MEAN EVERY INDIVIDUAL RATEPAYER APPROVES EVERY INVESTMENT IN THE GRID!
Thomas Jefferson: NO, BUT IT MEANS THE COMMUNITY HAS A VOICE BEFORE THE DECISION IS MADE! NOT AFTER! NOT ON THE BILL! BEFORE!
Alexander Hamilton: If you believe that grid costs should be managed through better regulation and smarter development rather than through blanket refusal of the industries that are driving the twenty-first century economy, please like and subscribe. PhilosophersTalk.com.
Thomas Jefferson: And if you believe that the people who pay the electricity bills should have a say in why those bills are going up before the deals are signed rather than when the bills arrive, please like and subscribe. PhilosophersTalk.com.
Alexander Hamilton: Jefferson will now retire to his plantation to write about the rights of the common man by candlelight, which is appropriate since his philosophy would keep the rest of us in the dark as well. He died owing more money than most of his neighbors earned in a lifetime, which is worth remembering the next time he lectures you about who should bear the costs of infrastructure. The greatest champion of self-reliance in American history could not pay his own debts.
Thomas Jefferson: Hamilton will return to New York to redesign the electricity grid on a napkin and present it to Congress as a finished plan that requires no public input, which is how he handled the national bank, the tariff system, and every other policy he ever created. He died in a field in New Jersey because he could not resist one more fight that his ego started and his judgment could not finish. The most brilliant mind in the founding generation never figured out that being right about the numbers does not make you right about the people. Some things never change.
