I mean, if they're offering $10,000 per resident in order to put this in, that means that they're expecting to do way more than $10,000 worth of damage to their property values, and they're trying to bribe them out for pennies.

it is like bribery

$10k apiece isn't "bribery", it's a granule of a scrap at best (all but a rounding error, really), and so out of touch that it smacks more of their flagrant disregard for the rest of humanity as a whole. 🤬

To clarify, fellow poors, here's some back of the napkin math:

Hazle Township population: 10,460

"Bribe" per resident: $10,000

NorthPoint Development estimated worth: $20,000,000,000

Total "bribe" amount for "Project Hazelnut" : $10,4600,000

Total percentage of NorthPoint Development's worth: 0.2092%

Ergo, not a bribe. It's the literal least they could do.

☝🏼Not at all, TBF.

Because it is bribery. Then when you get health problems from being near it, 10k will be a drop in the bucket.

Over $10 million's worth, to be more precise.

Ugh i hate that you are putting me in a position to stick up for big tech but its business 101, if the revenue stream is projected to out perform the cost of x,y,z then its a no brainer. Usually its done with stealing patents. If the legal costs and payout to the entity who got their patent product design copied is less than the expected sales then its a win win for both parties. The plaintiff gets their payout wile also getting a boost to their marketing (so such thing as bad publicity) and the offender gets their stolen product design cleared after fines are paid.

In this spicific case the datacenter would be playing the lottery guessing how much damage their operation will be found liable to pay off but they know pretty fucking close to on the dot how much revenue their datacenter will produce. They have their reasons for choosing the location they are pushing to build on so they calculate the amount they can comfortably afford as payout and they use that as their opening offer.

Its done a fuckton by windmill farms and solar farms cuz the rural folk tend to yell they toookerrrrrpetro or they tooooookerrrrbeautiful scenery.

Just to show that its not always used by dirty fucks its a legit buisness tool.