Joel Salatin, “Subsidies Warp Technology Markets and Rob Society of Better Solutions,” The Epoch Times (6/5/2026)
Cows graze in the area where a proposed data center will be built in Utah on May 15, 2026. Natalie Behring/Getty Images
Subsidies Warp Technology Markets and Rob Society of Better Solutions
AI data centers. The very phrase makes some folks shudder and others leap for joy. As these mega-developments proceed, more and more people are growing concerned about their energy and water requirements.
Right now, data centers account for 25 percent of Virginia’s electricity use; the next nearest state is 15 percent. A proposed project in Kentucky is slated to use as much energy as powering a third of New York City. Maine is the first state to put a moratorium on data centers. Elon Musk wants to populate space with them in order to get solar power unimpeded by atmospheric blockage and cooling outside earth’s ambient temperature.
I had dinner recently with an engineer in Wisconsin who told me designers were trying to figure out how to build submersible data centers in the Great Lakes. It takes about three quarts of water to cool the computers that generate one AI email. As if all this isn’t enough to create concern, Wall Street pundits seem giddy to invest one day and fearful of a bubble the next. Where is all this going?
While policy wonks and various factions argue about economic and environmental guardrails to this latest technological juggernaut, are we missing the biggest issue? All technologies come with social, environmental, and economic price tags. All technologies disrupt cultural norms.
When kerosene replaced whale oil to power street lamps, one major industry replaced another. A new distribution, refining, and maintenance system developed. When electricity replaced kerosene, that was yet another technological disruption. Surely the automobile replacing draft power fundamentally changed society.
See also Jeffrey A. Tucker, “Economic Calculation and the Vaccine Industry,” Brownstone Journal (June 7, 2026)
Economic Calculation and the Vaccine Industry
The cacophony for and against vaccines – even what is a vaccine is in broad dispute – has reached new level of deafening absurdity. There isn’t just one rabbit hole but hundreds.
Compliance is tanking, which is what one would expect after brutal mandates and ubiquitous injury and death. Meanwhile, pharma bots are dominating social media to shame dissidents, while legacy media turns news pages into nonstop shot-and-pill advertising.
Everyone is left with questions about whom to trust and what is true. Several states have already seceded from the CDC’s own attempt to change the childhood schedule even slightly. That’s how contentious this issue has become.
My thesis: this epistemic nihilism is born of the deliberate subversion of economic signaling systems that would otherwise reveal inconvenient truths.
Let’s begin with theory.
In 1920, Ludwig von Mises set aside all moral, aesthetic, and philosophical issues concerning socialism and examined how it would work as a purely economic experiment. This was a point rarely considered at all in the centuries before, even by the new leaders of the Soviet Union who had no idea what they were doing beyond nationalizing industry, blathering on about the dictatorship of the proletariat, and demonizing land owners.
Mises calmly explained that double-entry bookkeeping is the mathematical means by which society has come to evaluate the benefits and costs of resource use. This requires prices, which are indicators of relative scarcities and consumer demand. These prices form the essential building blocks of economic knowledge. They provide pointers regarding the essential questions of what to produce and in what quantity.
In order for these prices to be accurate, they must be formed in the context of real-world market trading up and down the full structure of production, from raw materials through capital goods to consumer goods. Only that process generates reliable signals from which accounting is built.
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