Thank you. At least someone understands what I was trying to day. You put that much better than I did.

It seems like both of you have thoroughly missed the context of my subthread.

If your goal is to point out that people make choices, well, you're in the wrong thread branch and want to instead reply to a different part of the same message that I replied to. Because I never said or implied that they don't. Quite the opposite in fact.

Here is the context of my subthread, extracted, in two parts:

Part 1, the framing.

> "I don't know if [elected officials think a wrong thing about datacenters] or if it's kickbacks."

You see, the kickbacks option is already there. We all already understand that it could be kickbacks. Therefore bringing it up further would just be silly. I certainly have no reason to say that kickbacks aren't a possibility. The only part we need to address is OP believing that [thing is wrong].

Part 2, the [thing].

> "I'm pro-progress, but a datacenter brings approximately nothing to the local economy. It doesn't employ any noteworthy number of people, it doesn't generate any real tax revenue, and it increases electricity costs for the region."

That distills to:

> "a datacenter brings approximately nothing to the local economy"

That statement means either:

A (haven't): datacenters have in the past only ever brought nothing (and therefore they will in the future only ever bring nothing)

or

B (can't): datacenters cannot bring anything other than nothing (and therefore they will in the future only ever bring nothing)

And they're both wrong. A is wrong because past behavior does not imply future behavior. And B is wrong because in fact they can.