Philosophers Talk Podcast

Napoleon: The new Congress is not sworn in until January. That gives us eight weeks, and I once took Vienna in less.

Duke of Wellington: You want to widen a war in the eight weeks before the people who pay for it arrive.

Napoleon: I want to finish an old war, Duke, which is a completely different hobby.

Duke of Wellington: Every man who ever said finish was standing in front of a much bigger war.

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Samuel Johnson: Welcome back to ringside for part two. Round one went to the Duke on my card, and to the Emperor on the card of my colleague, who scores by a different moral system, which is to say none at all.

Niccolo Machiavelli: I score by results, Doctor, which is the only moral system that has never lost an election.

Samuel Johnson: The tale of the tape for round two. What should America do now? Qatar is circulating a draft that opens with three days of confidence building steps. Iran says it could reopen the Strait of Hormuz within two days if its demands are met, including an end to the blockade, its money unfrozen, oil sanctions waived, and the fighting in Lebanon stopped. Meanwhile the President says America is locked and loaded.

Niccolo Machiavelli: And there is a clock in the ring, Doctor. The new Congress takes its seats on the third of January, and Senator Schumer is already talking about the power of the purse. My book advises a prince to commit all his cruelties at once. I suspect the Emperor has read that chapter, because I enclosed it with my job application.

Samuel Johnson: I once wrote an entire pamphlet against Americans complaining about taxation, so I will score the power of the purse with deep suspicion. Napoleon, Duke of Wellington, come out fighting.

Napoleon: Thank you, Doctor. I begin with a confession, which I rarely do, because it is bad for the posture. In 1799 I had a problem with a legislature called the Council of Five Hundred. So I walked into their chamber with some grenadiers, and a good number of the council left through the windows. I am not recommending this. I am only saying it was quick, and a man remembers these things when someone tells him a new Congress arrives in January.

Duke of Wellington: The audience will note that his opening statement was a coup.

Napoleon: A very small coup, Duke. Mostly windows. Now, my proposal. Until January the President still commands the purse and the bombers, and Iran knows it. Their new supreme leader says anyone expecting a shift in American policy after the election is seriously mistaken. Their chief negotiator says Americans said no to war and Iran endorses the message. They are campaigning in your election, Duke! So give them the strike the Israelis have been asking for. Hit Pickaxe Mountain, the nuclear site the President named on Monday. Keep the blockade. Short and intense, which is reportedly what the Gulf allies were told to expect. Then go to Qatar with the rubble on the table. In my experience, the other side becomes very reasonable once the thing they were negotiating about is on fire.

Duke of Wellington: I shall state your case at full strength, since you stated it at full volume. Leverage is perishable. The President holds the purse and the bombers today and may not in January. Iran is openly waiting out the clock, and every week of talks without force is a week Tehran spends rebuilding and betting on Congress. So strike while a strike can still be ordered and paid for, and negotiate from the wreckage rather than the calendar. It is coherent. It is the logic of a man who never once had to wait for a vote of supply, and I state it fairly only so the audience can watch it fall over on its own.

Napoleon: Duke, my arguments do not fall over. Occasionally they retreat from Russia, but they retreat in good order.

Duke of Wellington: They retreated with a small fraction of the men they started with, and that was the good order. You propose to bomb a nuclear site to settle a nuclear question. On the thirty first of October Iran’s security chief said the leadership has made no new decision on its nuclear doctrine, but that could change if the war resumes. You would be bombing the one thing still holding that door shut. And there is the material, four hundred forty kilograms no inspector has seen since February. You cannot bomb what you cannot find. You can only persuade the people hiding it that they need it more.

Napoleon: Ah, the missing uranium. The Duke loves the missing uranium. It is his favorite thing in the world after the Duke.

Duke of Wellington: I am fond of it because nobody else will admit it exists. The whole art of war is finding out what is on the other side of the hill. We do not know where the material is. American officials believe the new supreme leader was seriously wounded. He has not been seen or heard in public since taking the title, and he issues orders through a Telegram account. We do not know if he is well enough to command or merely well enough to sign. And you would bet the whole strait on reading his mind.

Napoleon: You are describing every war in history, Duke. At Austerlitz I did not know what the Russians would do either. So I gave them the heights they wanted and took the heights back when they were standing on the wrong side of the field. I used uncertainty like a sword. You use it like a sofa.

Duke of Wellington: A sofa. Very good. I have sat through worse from better men.

Napoleon: He liked it, you see, he liked the sofa. Now I must steelman your plan, Duke, slowly and carefully, the way one handles a cake that one is about to sit on. You say take the Qatari draft, three days of small steps, because both sides must prove they can keep a little promise before anyone makes a large one. Iran claims it can reopen the strait in two days, so make it prove that first. Congress is not an obstacle but a fact, and a war the purse will not fund in January is a war you should end on your own terms in December. And all of it must be enforced, because the June memorandum was signed and lasted three weeks. It is the plan of a man who would negotiate a truce with a thunderstorm if it promised to rain on schedule.

Duke of Wellington: The thunderstorm would keep its terms better than your Continental System did. The order is everything. The strait and the mines first, verified by ships actually moving. Then inspectors back inside Iran for a full accounting of that uranium. Only then does the blockade lift, in stages. The frozen money goes into an account Iran can see but cannot spend until the material has left the country. And Lebanon goes in a separate room, because if you put every war in the region into one treaty, you will sign nothing before you are dead. After 1815 I commanded the Army of Occupation in France. We stayed until the indemnity was being paid, and then we left two years early, because the occupation had done its work. That is enforcement. Enforcement is not a social media post announcing that the deal is over.

Napoleon: And who pays for your enforcement, Duke? Your new Congress? Senator Schumer is suggesting he may pull the money. Representative Crow calls appropriations one of their most powerful tools. You want to negotiate with Tehran while the people behind you carry the furniture out of the house!

Duke of Wellington: Which is exactly why the deal must be made with Congress and not around it. I fought in Spain for six years under a Parliament that could have cut me off any session it liked. I learned to send home results the opposition could not stand up and deny. Lift the blockade in exchange for tankers moving through Hormuz, and the price of petrol falls, and no Democrat in America will vote against cheaper petrol. That is how you make the purse your ally. You do not race it to January.

Napoleon: You always make it sound so reasonable. Yet in Novemb…

Duke of Wellington: The President says part of it was Iran. His Vice President says the reason they lost is the war. Even the losing side cannot agree on why it lost.

Napoleon: Every defeat has a thousand explanations, Duke, and I have personally used all of them.

Duke of Wellington: You destroyed their navy and their air force, and you still lost Kansas.

Napoleon: Kansas is not a military objective, Duke. Kansas is a feeling.

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Samuel Johnson: Good evening, and welcome to ringside. I am Samuel Johnson, author of the Dictionary, and I will call tonight’s bout with perfect impartiality. One fighter is a Frenchman, the other was born in Dublin, and the war belongs to the Americans, and as Boswell will tell you, I am willing to love all mankind except an American.

Niccolo Machiavelli: And I am Niccolo Machiavelli, your color man. After the last bout I offered the Emperor my services as an advisor. He asked whether I had ever won anything. I told him no, but that I had written about winning more beautifully than anyone alive.

Samuel Johnson: The tale of the tape, sir. Fifth meeting between these men on the Iran war. In the blue corner, Napoleon, five foot two in French inches, five foot seven in English ones. In the red corner, the Duke of Wellington, holder of the Waterloo belt since 1815, who never lost a battle and never once smiled about it.

Niccolo Machiavelli: And on Tuesday the American voters handed the Democrats both houses of Congress, flipping Senate seats in Kansas, Texas, and Ohio. The President says part of it was Iran. His Vice President says the war was the reason. When the prince and his heir disagree in public about a defeat, I start polishing my resume.

Samuel Johnson: The question in the main event. After nine months, is this war a success or a failure? Napoleon, Duke of Wellington, the floor is yours.

Napoleon: Thank you, Doctor. I watched the American results very closely on Tuesday, which is easy when you are dead, because there is nothing else on the calendar. And I thought, how sad, a great leader betrayed by his own legislature. Then I remembered the exact same thing happened to me in June of 1815, and I felt much better, because it means the President is in very good company.

Duke of Wellington: You were in Belgium in June of 1815. I recall the company very clearly.

Napoleon: Ha, you see, he does jokes now. Very good, Duke. But somebody must make the case for success, so look at the ledger. The supreme leader of Iran was killed in the opening strikes. The President says their navy is gone, their air force is gone, their air defenses are gone. Since July the blockade has turned back one hundred forty four ships. Iran is sending negotiators to Qatar to discuss terms. In my day, when the enemy sends a man to discuss terms, you have won, and everything after that is paperwork.

Duke of Wellington: In your day the enemy was supposed to send a man to discuss terms in Moscow. You waited five weeks for him, and then you walked home.

Napoleon: Moscow was a weather problem, Duke, not a strategy problem. Everybody knows this.

Duke of Wellington: Allow me to state your case better than you did, so nobody can say I beat a weaker version of it. You hold that the war was meant to break Iran’s capacity to threaten its neighbors and to keep a bomb out of its hands. The old supreme leader is dead, the military is shattered, the economy is strangled, and an election is a domestic inconvenience with no bearing on the military facts. Battles are not decided in Kansas. It is not a stupid case. I state it fairly only so that it will lie still while I take it apart.

Napoleon: That is very generous, Duke. I feel like a pheasant being complimented on its feathers by the man holding the gun.

Duke of Wellington: Now the facts. The objective was the nuclear program. In May the atomic energy agency reported that Iran held about four hundred forty kilograms of uranium enriched to sixty percent. No inspector has been inside Iran since February. Nobody in Washington can tell you where that material is tonight. The old supreme leader has been replaced by his son, who has not appeared in public since, and who ordered last week that Iran answer any threat without geographic limits. You removed a man who had issued a religious ruling against the bomb, and you replaced him with a man who has a grievance.

Napoleon: This is the problem with the British. You walk into a room where the furniture is on fire and complain that the curtains are an ugly color.

Duke of Wellington: The curtains are the Strait of Hormuz. Iran’s Revolutionary Guard says four tankers struck mines this week and are still burning. Oil hit one hundred sixteen dollars a barrel in late October and fell below one hundred only on Wednesday, when traders decided the election might end the war. That is a remarkable compliment to pay the voters and a remarkable insult to pay the generals.

Napoleon: Now I will steelman you, though I am only doing it to find the weak beam before I bring down the roof. Your case is that war is a political instrument, and an instrument that cannot reach its political purpose has failed, no matter how much it breaks. The bomb material is missing, the strait is contested, the new leader is harder than the old one, and the American people have now fired the President’s party over it. A victory the voters reject is not a victory, it is a loan, and the interest came due on Tuesday. Do I have it?

Duke of Wellington: You have it exactly. I find that slightly alarming.

Napoleon: Good. It is wrong. In 1806 I closed the whole continent of Europe to British trade, every port from Hamburg to Naples. And for years everybody told me, Napoleon, the prices are high, the people of Bordeaux cannot get their coffee. And I said yes, but the British are suffering more. And they were! Riots! Bank failures! And then I invaded Russia, which is a separate story I do not wish to tell tonight.

Duke of Wellington: It is the only part of the story with an ending.

Napoleon: You see, he waits, he waits, and then he does that. But my point stands. Pressure costs the man who applies it, and that is how you know it is working. The President told Fox News he does not think it was the war, he thinks it was the gasoline price. That is a man who knows the difference between a strategy and its bill.

Duke of Wellington: The gasoline price is the war. The strait is closed because there is a war. That is like a fellow who says he does not mind the battle, it is only the cannonballs that bother him.

Napoleon: The cannonballs are a very small part of a battle, Duke. Mostly it is standing around.

Duke of Wellington: Then let us count the standing around. Eleven Americans killed in combat and twelve more dead from other causes, with more than eight hundred fifty wounded. Two hundred seventy four structures damaged at twenty four American bases. Forty seven billion dollars by October. In September the President said the war would end immediately after the midterm elections. The midterm elections have occurred. The war has not.

Napoleon: He did not say which midterm elections, Duke. There will be others.

Duke of Wellington: Seventy four percent of voters in a Fox News survey called the war a crucial or major factor in their vote. Most voters in the exit polls called it the wrong decision, including about a quarter of Republicans. You cannot fight a long war against a nation’s patience, and you certainly cannot fight one against its gasoline.

Napoleon: You keep saying voters as if it settles something. When I came back from Elba, the people cheered me all the way to Paris. The regiment sent to arrest me joined me instead. One hundred days later the same people asked me to leave. Nothing about my strategy changed in between. The only thing that change…

Samuel Johnson: Six bouts, twelve fighters, and one question that nobody could pin to the mat.

Niccolo Machiavelli: Six bouts, Doctor, and you scored every single one of them for the wrong man.

Samuel Johnson: Tonight we go to the replay, sir, and the replay will vindicate me completely.

Niccolo Machiavelli: The replay has never vindicated anyone, Doctor, which is exactly why I love it.

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Samuel Johnson: Good evening, and welcome to the highlight reel of the season. I am Samuel Johnson, author of the Dictionary, and for six weeks I have called the toughest card in the history of political economy with perfect impartiality. Somebody fetch Boswell, for tonight I mean to be quoted.

Niccolo Machiavelli: And I am Niccolo Machiavelli, your color man. Since the season began I have been turned down for employment by Otto von Bismarck and by Alexander Hamilton, who forwarded my letter to Thomas Jefferson. I am therefore unemployed, and free at last to tell you the truth.

Samuel Johnson: Let us run the tale of the tape for the whole season. One question in the main event. If the law treated a data center like a plain warehouse, with a warehouse’s share of power and water and no special tax break, could it still make money?

Niccolo Machiavelli: Six bouts to answer it, Doctor, and I would like the audience to know that nobody was disqualified, though several men deserved it.

Samuel Johnson: Roll the tape on bout one. Henry George, gentle as a parson, walks to the center of the ring and hits Leland Stanford with the Georgia figure, two and a half billion dollars of tax forgiven in a single year. Then George calls the whole thing a tip. A tip, sir! The crowd was on its feet.

Niccolo Machiavelli: Now watch Stanford in slow motion. Every time he is hit, he says I do not recall. He absorbs the blow by simply declining to remember it. That is not a defense, Doctor. That is a technique, and I want it taught in schools.

Samuel Johnson: Then the reversal, and I grant it was a beauty. Stanford catches George with his own book. A strict single tax would leave the servers untaxed too. I took a subsidy, sir, says Stanford. You wrote one.

Niccolo Machiavelli: Off the ropes, with the opponent’s own manual. Cesare Borgia never threw a cleaner punch in his life.

Samuel Johnson: Bout two, the Professor against the Scotchman. William Graham Sumner reads Andrew Carnegie his own words from 1890, that the steel industry was not yet fully grown and had to be protected. Then the finishing move. Your industry is no infant, sir. It is merely holding the bottle!

Niccolo Machiavelli: And then my man Carnegie finds the hole. The ratepayer’s sixteen dollars a month never reaches the data center at all. It goes to the owners of power plants. Sumner had to concede it on camera. He had been prosecuting a man who was not holding the purse.

Samuel Johnson: Before Carnegie scored an own goal, sir. He said he always built with his own money, once the tariff was paid! I have not seen a man confess that cheerfully since my Dictionary defined oats.

Niccolo Machiavelli: It was a charming confession, Doctor, and charm wins rounds you would never award on points.

Samuel Johnson: Bout three, and I confess it was painful to call. John Locke, a Whig, and the first Whig was the Devil, defending the common well. Jeremy Bentham comes off the top rope with Locke’s own pitcher. By your book, he says, the water belongs to whoever draws it.

Niccolo Machiavelli: The crowd thought it was over. Bentham even scored his own move a nine.

Samuel Johnson: And then Locke reads the very next line, sir! The pitcher is fair only while a whole river is left. When the aquifer falls, the proviso closes the tap. Then the line of the season. You cannot carry a dead man to the next page.

Niccolo Machiavelli: Bentham scored that one a twelve, which is the only time in history a utilitarian graded on a curve. I still had Bentham on my card, Doctor, for volume of arithmetic alone.

Samuel Johnson: Bout four, the lawyer against the Prussian, and the greatest upset of the season. Bismarck hits Blackstone with a passage from his own Commentaries, permitting a forced sale with full compensation. Sir William, he says, you are not a wall. You are a cashier.

Niccolo Machiavelli: And Blackstone does not go down. He comes back with three conditions. The legislature must order it, the payment must be full, and the use must be public. A wire to one unnamed customer, he says, is not the public.

Samuel Johnson: And then the upset, sir. The Prussian agreed with him! A line for a private customer should be bought and not taken. I called for Boswell, because I had just praised a German.

Niccolo Machiavelli: Then Bismarck’s late blow, which nobody saw coming. Make them generate their own power, and the turbines move next door. You have moved it fifty yards and changed the smell. That one followed us all the way to the finale.

Samuel Johnson: Bout five, the tag team rematch. George and Sumner both won their first bouts, and both despise the subsidy. Then they discover they despise each other’s cure even more.

Niccolo Machiavelli: George calls the Professor’s contract a regulated monopoly with good manners. Sumner says George would hand the reins to the horse thief and call it reform. Two clean shots, Doctor, both landed, and neither man went down.

Samuel Johnson: And gentle Henry George raised his voice for the first time all season, and then apologized for it. Sir, I nearly wept.

Niccolo Machiavelli: Then he forgave his opponent on the way out of the ring. In my profession, Doctor, public forgiveness is a foreign object, and the referee should have checked his gloves.

Samuel Johnson: Bout six, the main event. Walter Bagehot opens the ledger and lands the opening line of the season. A business that cannot pay for its own electricity is not an industry. It is a mood.

Niccolo Machiavelli: And Bagehot works the body all night. The best campuses can pay. The old ones and the city ones cannot. The rule does not kill the industry. It sorts it. Then he calls Hamilton an aristocrat on purpose, purely to watch him detonate.

Samuel Johnson: But the turning point belonged to Hamilton, sir, and I will give it to him. He would defend help voted openly by a legislature. He would never defend a subsidy hidden in a widow’s electric bill or a sealed contract. Let Congress vote a bounty in daylight, he says, and put its name to it.

Niccolo Machiavelli: And Bagehot answers by giving up the warehouse entirely. The honest rule is not be a warehouse. It is pay what you cost. Six bouts to arrive at four words, Doctor.

Samuel Johnson: Now to the season awards. Move of the season, in my judgment, goes to John Locke, for reading the next line of his own book while the whole arena thought he was finished.

Niccolo Machiavelli: My move of the season goes to Leland Stanford, for I do not recall. He used it every time it mattered and was never once penalized for it.

Samuel Johnson: And the undefeated champion of the season, sir, is not a man at all. It is the sealed contract. Twelve men climbed into the ring, and not one of them laid a glove on it.

Niccolo Machiavelli: On that, Doctor, we agree completely. Nobody knows what these companies pay for power or water, so nobody could finish the sum. The belt stays in the drawer.

Samuel Johnson: Then let me state your scoring fairly, sir, before I knock it flat. You score the man who leaves the ring with the most, whatever he took to get it. Survival is your only virtue, and a clean escape is worth more to you than a true argument.

Niccolo Machiavelli: That was accurate, Doctor, and nearly impartial. And yours. You score the man who was right, whether or not he won a single exchange, and you assume the crowd will eventually agree with you. It is a lovely system. It …

Samuel Johnson: Good evening, and welcome to the sixth and final bout. For five evenings we have asked who pays. Tonight we ask the question this whole series was built on. If the law treated a data center like a plain warehouse, could it still make money? I am Samuel Johnson, and I have been looking forward to this, sir, because tonight there is a ledger.

Niccolo Machiavelli: The Doctor loves a ledger because it is the only document that cannot be accused of being a Whig.

Samuel Johnson: In the near corner stands Walter Bagehot, for seventeen years the editor of The Economist, and an Englishman who explained the money market to the very men who run it. He wrote that John Bull can stand many things, but he cannot stand two per cent. Somebody fetch Boswell, for I am about to cheer for a journalist.

Niccolo Machiavelli: And in the far corner stands my man, Alexander Hamilton, first Secretary of the Treasury, who built a nation on borrowed money and was then shot by a sitting vice president. I have applied for a position at his Treasury. I await his reply.

Samuel Johnson: My Dictionary has a word for the men who live on the ups and downs of grand ventures. A stockjobber, sir, is a low wretch who gets money by buying and selling shares in the funds.

Niccolo Machiavelli: In chapter twenty five of The Prince, I wrote that fortune is like a flooding river, and wise men build their dykes in calm weather. Hamilton builds dykes. The Doctor stands on the bank and defines the water.

Samuel Johnson: Sir, the water deserves a definition, and nobody else is going to give it one.

Niccolo Machiavelli: That is the truest thing you have said in six episodes, Doctor.

Samuel Johnson: Walter Bagehot, Alexander Hamilton, the floor is yours for the last time, gentlemen. Leave the ledger in better order than you found it.

Niccolo Machiavelli: Mister Hamilton, borrow the floor, and promise to pay it back later.

Walter Bagehot: Thank you, Doctor Johnson. I say a business that cannot pay for its own electricity is not an industry. It is a mood.

Alexander Hamilton: Thank you, Signor Machiavelli, and no, there is no position at the Treasury. I say no great industry in history ever paid its own way at the start.

Walter Bagehot: Mister Hamilton has never met a subsidy he could not describe as nation building.

Alexander Hamilton: Mister Bagehot has never built anything larger than a magazine, and he would like a medal for it.

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Walter Bagehot: I am Walter Bagehot, editor of The Economist for seventeen years and author of Lombard Street. I spent my career watching Englishmen lose fortunes on railways, canals and other things that would certainly change the world. Some of them did change the world. Most of the investors went broke anyway. Tonight I have been handed a ledger, and I intend to read it aloud, slowly, to a man who would prefer I did not.

Alexander Hamilton: And I am Alexander Hamilton, first Secretary of the Treasury. I funded a bankrupt nation’s debts, founded its national bank, and in 1791 sent Congress a Report on Manufactures arguing that a young country must deliberately encourage its industries. I have been lectured on finance by Thomas Jefferson, who could not balance a household account. I can certainly survive Mister Bagehot.

Walter Bagehot: Then here is the question of this whole series. Suppose a data center may draw from the grid only what a warehouse of the same size would draw. It may take from the city main and the aquifer only what a warehouse would take. And it gets no tax break written for its industry alone. Could it still make money? Take a large campus for artificial intelligence, counted per megawatt per year. The industry says it earns ten to twelve million dollars. One independent model puts the full cost at about eight and a half million, most of it the chips. That leaves a margin of one and a half to three and a half million.

Alexander Hamilton: Get on with it, sir, I can hear the abacus warming up.

Walter Bagehot: Now make it pay its own way, by my own arithmetic, which I invite anyone to check. Making its own power from gas costs more than buying from the grid, perhaps one hundred thousand to six hundred fifty thousand dollars a megawatt. Cooling without water adds perhaps fifty thousand to three hundred thousand. Paying sales tax on the servers like any grocer adds another three to four hundred fifty thousand. Property tax at the full rate, up to three hundred thousand more. All in, from under half a million to one point seven million. On the best campus it is a dent. In the middle it is forty percent of the margin. At the worst it is all of it.

Alexander Hamilton: Then your own ledger acquits them, sir! On the best campuses it is a dent. You have just proven my industry can bear the weight, and you are calling it an indictment.

Walter Bagehot: I have proven the best of them can bear it, which is a very different thing. The older buildings that rent space to many customers earn perhaps two to three million a megawatt, and the same bill eats a ten percent return at the middle of the range. The ones inside cities cannot build a power plant in the car park. The rule does not kill the industry, Mister Hamilton. It sorts it.

Alexander Hamilton: Sorted by whom, Mister Bagehot? By a man with a spreadsheet in London?

Walter Bagehot: Sorted by the customers, which is far worse for you. And then there is Ohio. When one utility required data centers to pay for eighty five percent of the power they reserved, for up to twelve years, its forecast of new demand fell from thirty thousand megawatts to about fifty seven hundred. Four fifths of the boom disappeared the moment it was asked to sign. The rule does not destroy the industry. It destroys the mania.

Alexander Hamilton: That is very tidy, Mister Bagehot, and very English. In my Report I warned that the established nations would never allow an infant industry to grow up in peace. I recommended bounties, paid openly, so the young enterprise could survive its first winters. Every great American undertaking was helped at the start. Your warehouse rule would have strangled every one of them in its cradle, and this industry is racing the entire world.

Walter Bagehot: Your Report produced a company town at the Great Falls in Paterson, New Jersey, with a handsome charter and grand plans. Within a few years the factory had stopped. Paterson recovered beautifully, and later gave the world William Graham Sumner, which I count as a second failure.

Alexander Hamilton: You sit in London with your clubs and your coffee and lecture a nation you never had to build.

Walter Bagehot: Spoken like a true aristocrat, Mister Hamilton.

Alexander Hamilton: Do not call me an aristocrat, sir! I came to this continent an orphan from Nevis with nothing but a clerk’s pen and a ship’s ticket. Every dollar of credit this country has, I built from a pile of unpaid debts. I will not be called an elitist by a man who married the daughter of the owner of his own magazine!

Walter Bagehot: That one landed, I admit, and I shall score it to you. Now let me state your case properly, purely so that I may take it apart in the right order. You say a new industry faces costs at the start that it will never face again. You say a nation that waits for an industry to prove itself is overtaken by nations that did not wait. You say the help is repaid many times over in taxes, as Loudoun County collects one point two billion dollars a year from its data centers. That is a serious argument, and I have made it sound considerably calmer than you do.

Alexander Hamilton: Adequately put. And yours, in fewer words. A cost that is hidden is a cost nobody counts. An industry that needs a gift has not proved it deserves one. And a boom that cannot survive a contract is a bubble with a…

Samuel Johnson: Good evening, and welcome to bout five of six, the rematch. Tonight everyone agrees who is being robbed, and the only question is what to do about it. I am Samuel Johnson, and I am obliged this evening to watch two Americans, which is twice my usual allowance.

Niccolo Machiavelli: The Doctor once called the Americans a race of convicts, so tonight he is attending a parole hearing.

Samuel Johnson: Sir! In the near corner, returning from bout one, stands Henry George, the gentle printer who would collect the rent of the whole earth for the public purse. I find him kind, I find him sincere, and I find him dangerous. As I once told Boswell, your levellers wish to level down as far as themselves, but they cannot bear levelling up to themselves.

Niccolo Machiavelli: And in the far corner, returning from bout two, stands William Graham Sumner, who would let nobody have anything from the public purse at all. I promised to back whichever man fights dirtier, and I have money on the professor.

Samuel Johnson: Both men despise the subsidy. Georgia forgives its data centers two and a half billion dollars a year, and neither man would forgive them a penny. Tonight they discover how much they despise each other’s cure.

Niccolo Machiavelli: In The Prince I advised that what belongs neither to you nor to your subjects, you may give away freely. Every governor in America has followed that chapter, Doctor, and not one has credited me.

Samuel Johnson: That is not advice, sir. That is a confession on behalf of the entire profession.

Niccolo Machiavelli: It is chapter sixteen, and it has paid for more ribbon cuttings than any book ever printed.

Samuel Johnson: Mister George, Professor Sumner, the floor is yours, gentlemen. Somebody fetch Boswell, for I expect blood.

Niccolo Machiavelli: Professor, aim low and keep moving.

Henry George: Thank you, Doctor Johnson, though I have never levelled anyone in my life. I say the cure is to charge full rent for what no man made, and to tax nothing that any man did make.

William Graham Sumner: Thank you, Signor Machiavelli, but I do not aim low, I aim accurately. I say the cure is to give nothing, regulate nothing, and make every man sign his own bill.

Henry George: The Professor would protect the Forgotten Man by forgetting him a second time.

William Graham Sumner: Mister George would rescue the taxpayer by making the government his landlord.

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Henry George: Friends, the Professor and I have each been on this program before, and we agree on a great deal. Neither of us would give a data center a favor that is denied to the grocer. Neither of us would send a ratepayer the bill for another man’s power line. So tonight is not about whether there has been a robbery. It is about what to do with the burglar, and on that, I fear, the Professor and I are about to become very unfriendly.

William Graham Sumner: We agree on the robbery, and I am obliged to him for that much. I spent my life saying that A and B may not pass a law to make C pay for X. I said it about tariffs, and I say it about data centers. But where Mister George sees a public treasure being stolen, I see a public treasury about to be enlarged. He does not want to end the jobbery. He wants to own it.

Henry George: Then let me show you what I want to own. Watch what happens to land the moment a data center is zoned on it. In Loudoun County, Virginia, parcels zoned for data centers sell for two to three million dollars an acre. In Hillsboro, Oregon, an appraiser said a winery’s value was not based on grape production. It was based on what a data center would pay for the same acres. The farmer did nothing. The vines did nothing. The value came from the wires, the water mains, the highways and the people, all of them public. Tax that value in full, and you need not tax the machines, the wages, or the grocer at all.

William Graham Sumner: Two to three million dollars an acre, and Mister George would take nearly all of it. The farmer who held his land for forty years and sells at last finds the state at the closing table with its hand out. You call it rent. He calls it his retirement.

Henry George: If he bought at the price of a pasture and sells at the price of a server farm, the difference was handed to him by the public, and I would collect it from him gently. But do not tell the audience I would drive the data centers away. A tax on land cannot drive anyone away, because the land cannot leave. That is the beauty of it, Professor. The data center can move to Ohio. Loudoun County cannot.

William Graham Sumner: That was nearly a good point, and I will return to it.

Henry George: Let me first state the Professor’s case, since he states it so poorly himself. He says every favor the state can grant becomes a prize that men will lobby to win. He says a commission set up to protect the public will soon be captured by the companies it regulates. He says the only rule that cannot be bought is a contract both sides have signed. And he points to Ohio, where one demand to pay for eighty five percent of reserved power for twelve years made four fifths of the forecast vanish. That is a strong argument, and I have put it better than he did.

William Graham Sumner: You put it adequately, which from me is a compliment.

Henry George: Now the flaw. The Professor’s contract was written by a monopoly utility that holds an exclusive franchise from the state, under a tariff approved by a public commission. His free market is a regulated monopoly charging a price the state allowed. He has not escaped the state, Professor. He has only asked it to be stricter. And his contract does nothing for the man downwind. A family breathing a power plant’s smoke never signed anything. You cannot sign a contract with ten thousand pairs of lungs.

William Graham Sumner: The first part is true, and I dislike it intensely. The utility is a monopoly, and the contract is only as honest as the commission behind it. The second part I concede as well. The law of contract cannot reach a man who never came to the table. For him there is the law of nuisance and the courts, which are slow, and I will not pretend they are fast.

Henry George: Thank you, Professor. That is the most generous thing you have ever said, and it was a confession.

William Graham Sumner: And now, as I promised, your point about Ohio. You say the land cannot leave, and that is true. But its value can. Tax the Loudoun acre in full, and the next data center goes to the cheaper county. The Loudoun acre falls back toward the price of a pasture, and your rent fund falls with it. You have built your treasury on a boom.

Henry George: Then the rent falls, and the tax falls with it, and the farmer pays less. It is the only tax in the world that shrinks when the owner’s luck runs out. Your Ohio exemption, Professor, came in at twelve times its forecast, and nobody in Columbus sent the taxpayer a refund.

William Graham Sumner: Now Mister George’s case, stated properly, which I do only because the audience deserves to see what they would be voting for. He says some things no man made, the ground, the river, and the right of way. He says their value comes from the whole community, so the community should collect it. He says the grid and the water main are natural monopolies, so the public should own them outright, the nation the lines and the city the water. It is coherent, and it is sincere, and here is the trouble with it.

Henry George: Go on, Professor, I am bracing myself for the trouble.

William Graham Sumner: The men who would own the grid for the public are the very governors who just gave away two and a half billion dollars a year. You would hand the reins to the horse thief and call it reform.

Henry George: And you would leave the horse in the thief’s barn and call it…

Samuel Johnson: Good evening, and welcome to bout four of six. Tonight we ask whether a man’s farm may be taken for a power line that serves a private customer. I am Samuel Johnson, and for once I am entirely comfortable.

Niccolo Machiavelli: The Doctor is comfortable because one of tonight’s men is an English lawyer and the other is a Prussian.

Samuel Johnson: Sir, in the near corner stands Sir William Blackstone, whose Commentaries taught the law of England to half the world. He holds that the law will not permit the least violation of private property, not even for the general good. Somebody fetch Boswell, for I intend to agree with a lawyer on the record.

Niccolo Machiavelli: And in the far corner stands my man, Otto von Bismarck, who unified Germany with iron and blood and then bought up the railways. I have already written to him about a position.

Samuel Johnson: You wrote to the Medici about a position too, and dedicated an entire book to them.

Niccolo Machiavelli: And none of them read it, Doctor, which is why I am still available.

Samuel Johnson: Consider the stakes. In Georgia, Maryland, Virginia, Indiana and Pennsylvania, utilities are taking or threatening to take land for new power lines. By their own figures, most of the new capacity serves data centers. In Maryland the landowners call their state an extension cord for Virginia.

Niccolo Machiavelli: In The Prince I warned that men forget the death of their father sooner than the loss of their patrimony. Take a man’s land, my friends, and he will remember it at your funeral.

Samuel Johnson: That is the first wise thing you have ever said, and I resent it.

Niccolo Machiavelli: It is chapter seventeen, Doctor, and it has never once been wrong.

Samuel Johnson: Sir William Blackstone, Prince Otto von Bismarck, the floor is yours, gentlemen. Do not take any more of it than you need.

Niccolo Machiavelli: Prince Bismarck, take all of it, and send the Doctor the bill.

William Blackstone: Thank you, Doctor Johnson. I say the law will not take a man’s field for the convenience of his neighbor’s machine.

Otto von Bismarck: Thank you, Signor Machiavelli, I received your letter and I am still laughing. I say a nation that cannot run a wire across a cow pasture will not keep its lights on.

William Blackstone: The Prince believes a farmer’s deed is a suggestion written in pencil.

Otto von Bismarck: Sir William believes the law is perfect because he is the one who wrote it down.

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William Blackstone: I am Sir William Blackstone, author of the Commentaries on the Laws of England and a judge of the Court of Common Pleas. I described property as that sole and despotic dominion which one man claims over the external things of the world, in total exclusion of the right of any other individual in the universe. And I wrote that the regard of the law for private property is so great that it will not authorize the least violation of it, no, not even for the general good of the whole community. I said it in four volumes, and I meant every page.

Otto von Bismarck: And I am Otto von Bismarck, first chancellor of the German Empire. I told my parliament that the great questions of the day are not decided by speeches and majority decisions, but by iron and blood. When the private railways of Prussia served their shareholders better than they served the state, I bought them. I have read Sir William’s four volumes. They are very beautiful. I used two of them to level a table.

William Blackstone: Then let me read the Prince something shorter. In at least five American states, utilities are using or threatening compulsory purchase to build new high voltage lines. By the utilities’ own figures, seventy to eighty percent of the new capacity will serve data centers. In Georgia a utility proposes a thousand miles of new lines, and a woman says her childhood home is being taken. The utility declines to name the customers. In Maryland a company sued landowners merely to survey their fields for a line meant chiefly to serve the technology corridor in Virginia. That is not a public road, sir. That is a private driveway with a public permit.

Otto von Bismarck: The Georgia utility says it uses compulsion in fewer than one transaction in a hundred. The rest of the farmers sell. And the law you are weeping over, Sir William, is your own law. Every American state lets a utility take an easement for a public line, with compensation. The courts usually allow it. You should be proud. Your grandchildren have learned the lesson perfectly.

William Blackstone: Usually, Prince, but not always, and not forever. After the American Supreme Court allowed a city to take homes for a private development in 2005, forty five states passed laws to narrow the power. A line built chiefly for one private customer is the very case those laws were written against. And a farmer who sells with a court order in the next room has not sold. He has surrendered politely.

Otto von Bismarck: Now I will state Sir William’s case, which I do only so that I may bury it with full honors. He says property is a wall, not a fence with a gate. He says the man inside it owes his neighbor nothing he has not agreed to give. He says that once the state may take for one good cause, it will soon discover a great many good causes. It is a noble argument, and it is printed on very good paper.

William Blackstone: That was handsomely put, and quite nearly accurate, Prince.

Otto von Bismarck: And here is the burial. Sir William wrote one more sentence that he does not like to read aloud. He said the legislature may compel a man to sell his land, not by stripping him in an arbitrary manner, but by giving him a full indemnification and equivalent for the injury. So the great defender of property allowed the taking all along. He only argued about the price. Sir William, you are not a wall. You are a cashier.

William Blackstone: That passage is mine, and I will not disown it. But it carries three conditions, and the Prince has read none of them. It must be the legislature that compels, not a private company carrying a franchise in its pocket. It must be a full equivalent, not the price of a pasture before the wire arrived. And it must be for the public. A wire to one unnamed customer is not the public.

Otto von Bismarck: Now you have me, and I admit it with pleasure, because I would have said the same. When I wanted the railways, I did not lend a private company the sword of the state. I bought the railways for the state. If a line is truly public, let the public own it. If it serves one company, let the company buy the land like any other customer, at whatever the farmer asks. And I would want the customer’s name. A minister who signs a taking without knowing who it is for is a clerk, not a statesman.

William Blackstone: Then we agree on the case before us, which alarms me considerably.

Otto von Bismarck: Do not worry, Sir William. We shall disagree again within the minute.

William Blackstone: Then consider what the farmer is paid. In Pennsylvania, farm advocates say landowners in the path of a data center line ought to be compensated more fully than they are. The court pays him the market value of a pasture. It does not pay him for the forty years he meant to farm it, or the house his grandfather built, or the view he must now share with a steel tower.

Otto von Bismarck: Then pay him more, and I will not object. I am happy to pay a farmer handsomely. I object to one stubborn farmer holding a whole province hostage for the price of a lighthouse. Somewhere between the price of a pasture and a ransom there is a fair number, and a competent state can find it.

William Blackstone: A competent state, Prince, is the rarest creature in your entire argument.

Otto von Bismarck: I built one, Sir William, and I am told…

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.

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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 not…

Samuel Johnson: Good evening, and welcome to the second of six contests on who pays for the data center. I am Samuel Johnson, and I shall once again preside with perfect impartiality.

Niccolo Machiavelli: I am Niccolo Machiavelli, and as I wrote in The Prince, it is far safer to be feared than loved. The Doctor has settled for neither.

Samuel Johnson: Sir, tonight’s question is who truly pays the bill. In the near corner stands William Graham Sumner, a professor at Yale and the champion of the Forgotten Man. He is an American, which I am obliged to overlook.

Niccolo Machiavelli: The Doctor once called the Americans a race of convicts, so this is him being warm.

Samuel Johnson: And in the far corner stands Andrew Carnegie, a steelmaker and a Scotchman. My Dictionary records that oats are a grain which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people.

Niccolo Machiavelli: My man Carnegie took the tariff, sold out for three hundred million dollars, and is remembered for libraries. Cesare Borgia never managed anything so elegant.

Samuel Johnson: The household in Ohio now pays some sixteen dollars more each month for its electricity, and somebody must answer for it.

Niccolo Machiavelli: Somebody will be blamed, Doctor, which is not the same thing at all.

Samuel Johnson: Professor Sumner, Mister Carnegie, the floor is yours, gentlemen, and I beg you to keep it honest.

Niccolo Machiavelli: Mister Carnegie, kindly ignore the Doctor and do whatever works.

William Graham Sumner: Thank you, Doctor Johnson. I say the man who pays this bill was never invited to the meeting.

Andrew Carnegie: And thank you, Mister Machiavelli, I fully intend to. I say a great works repays its town many times over.

William Graham Sumner: Mister Carnegie called his industry an infant while he was the largest steelmaker on earth.

Andrew Carnegie: The Professor has a remedy for nothing and a lecture for everything.

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William Graham Sumner: I am William Graham Sumner, professor of political and social science at Yale, and before that a clergyman, which taught me to distrust a collection plate. In 1883 I described a pattern. A sees something he wishes done and talks it over with B. Then A and B pass a law deciding what C shall do for X. I call C the Forgotten Man. He works, he votes, generally he prays, but he always pays.

Andrew Carnegie: And I am Andrew Carnegie, born poor in Scotland, and a bobbin boy in a cotton mill at one dollar and twenty cents a week. I made steel cheaper than any man alive, sold the business for more than three hundred million dollars, and set about giving it away. I built more than sixteen hundred libraries in America. I mention it only because the Professor will not.

William Graham Sumner: Then let us find the Forgotten Man in the present case. A is a governor who wants a ribbon to cut. B is a company that wants a great deal of electricity. The independent monitor of the largest American power market says data centers account for six point three billion dollars of its last capacity auction, out of sixteen point four billion. Households in Ohio pay about sixteen dollars more each month. In seven states, four point three billion dollars of connection costs were assigned to ordinary ratepayers in a single year. That household is C, and nobody asked him.

Andrew Carnegie: Professor, you have read one column of the ledger. A national laboratory study found that the states with the fastest growth in demand saw real prices fall between 2019 and 2024. Another found rates six percent lower where data centers grew. I learned the reason at the mill. Run the works full and the cost of every ton comes down. A great customer shares the fixed cost of the wires with the widow down the lane.

William Graham Sumner: That second study was supported by Google, which I mention for the widow’s benefit. And both findings can be true. When a system has idle capacity, a large customer lowers the average cost. When it is full, the same customer forces new plant at a higher price, and the bill goes to everyone. Your evidence comes from the slack years, sir. The sixteen dollars comes from the tight ones.

Andrew Carnegie: Then hear what the town receives. Loudoun County in Virginia spends about four cents serving a data center for every dollar of tax it collects. An ordinary business costs the county twenty five cents. These buildings send no children to the schools and few wagons down the road. I never knew a town that was sorry to see my chimneys, Professor.

William Graham Sumner: Homestead was sorry, sir, though I grant you were in Scotland at the time. And observe who gains in your example. The county that taxes the machine does well. The household two states away on the same grid gets the bill and none of the tax.

Andrew Carnegie: The Professor has plainly been saving that one for some time.

William Graham Sumner: I shall now state Mister Carnegie’s case properly, which I do only because a weak opponent teaches nothing. He says size is the source of cheapness. He says a steady customer running day and night is the best customer a utility can have. He says the works pays more in tax than it takes in service. All of that is sound arithmetic, and none of it explains why he needs a favor.

Andrew Carnegie: That was nearly generous, Professor, and I shall treasure it always.

William Graham Sumner: Here is my answer to it. In 1890 you wrote that the steel industry was not yet fully grown and must be protected until it was. You were then the largest steelmaker on earth. I wrote a book calling protectionism the doctrine that waste makes wealth, and you were my best illustration. An industry spending seven hundred billion dollars a year is no infant either, sir. It is merely holding the bottle.

Andrew Carnegie: Now I shall do the Professor the same service, chiefly so the audience may see how little he asks for. He says that when two parties strike a bargain and send the bill to a third, it is no bargain at all. He says the cost is spread so thin that no household will fight it, while the gain is gathered so thick that somebody will always lobby for it. It is neatly put, and it is the most cheerful thing he has ever said.

William Graham Sumner: You have stated it accurately, which surprises me a good deal.

Andrew Carnegie: But the Professor has indicted the wrong man. That sixteen dollars does not come to the data center. It is a capacity payment, and it goes to the owners of power plants, many of them built long ago. The fellow he calls B never touches the money. And notice his cure. He would forbid the gift, and then forbid every rule that might replace it. He offers the Forgotten Man his deepest sympathy and nothing else.

William Graham Sumner: The first point is correct, and I concede it. The money lands in a third pocket. That makes it worse, because two parties arranged a transfer and neither can be made to return it. As for my cure, I want no warehouse rule and no commission. I want a contract. One utility in Ohio required these companies to pay for eighty five percent of the power they reserved, for up to twelve years, used or not. Its forecast of new demand fell from thirty thousand megawatts to under six thousand. Four fifths of your great future left the room when it was handed a pen.

Andrew Carnegie: Oh, that is good, Professor, and I may borrow it. But the fifth that stayed is the fifth that matters. I did not build every mill I sketched either. The men who signed in Ohio will pay their way, which proves my case. The serious builder never feared the bill.

William Graham Sumner: Then you will not object to your own rule. When you gave a town a library, you required it to own the site and to tax itself ten percent of the gift every year. You said a community not willing to …

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Samuel Johnson: Good evening. I am Samuel Johnson, author of A Dictionary of the English Language, and I have been engaged to call a series of six debates from this booth.

Niccolo Machiavelli: I am Niccolo Machiavelli, author of The Prince, and I have been engaged to tell you what is actually happening.

Samuel Johnson: Our subject is the data center. It is a windowless building full of calculating engines, which drinks like a town and draws power like a city.

Niccolo Machiavelli: And our question is a simple one. What if the law treated that building as the thing it resembles, which is a plain warehouse?

Samuel Johnson: Under that rule it may take from the grid only what a warehouse of the same size would take. It may draw from the city main and the aquifer only what a warehouse would draw.

Niccolo Machiavelli: It receives no tax favor written for its industry alone. Whatever else it needs, it must generate, find, or buy at the full price.

Samuel Johnson: Could such a building still turn a profit? Or does the whole enterprise stand upon gifts from people who were never asked?

Niccolo Machiavelli: That is too large a quarrel for one evening, Doctor, so we have cut it into six.

Samuel Johnson: In the first bout, Henry George meets Leland Stanford on whether a state should pay an industry to come.

Niccolo Machiavelli: In the second, William Graham Sumner and Andrew Carnegie dispute who is truly paying the bill.

Samuel Johnson: In the third, John Locke and Jeremy Bentham contest who owns the water under the ground and the air above it.

Niccolo Machiavelli: In the fourth, William Blackstone and Otto von Bismarck argue over whether a farm may be taken for a private customer’s power line.

Samuel Johnson: In the fifth, Sumner returns to face George, for both men despise the subsidy and neither can abide the other’s cure.

Niccolo Machiavelli: And in the sixth, Walter Bagehot and Alexander Hamilton open the ledger and settle whether the thing can pay its own way at all.

Samuel Johnson: Here is how the evenings will run. Before each debate we shall introduce the two men and the stakes. Then we go down to the floor and we do not interrupt.

Niccolo Machiavelli: When the shouting stops, we come back and score it. The Doctor scores on virtue, and I score on victory.

Samuel Johnson: I shall judge who was right, sir, as any honest man would.

Niccolo Machiavelli: And I shall judge who won, which is a different matter and a far more useful one.

Samuel Johnson: Then the audience may rely upon one honest scorecard at least.

Niccolo Machiavelli: The Doctor will now promise to be fair, so do enjoy it.

Samuel Johnson: I must assure the audience that I come to this task entirely without prejudice.

Niccolo Machiavelli: Doctor, you once wrote up the debates of Parliament for a magazine after sitting in the gallery a single time. You confessed that you took care the Whig dogs should not have the best of it.

Samuel Johnson: I saved appearances tolerably well, and I shall do so again.

Niccolo Machiavelli: Whereas I shall simply back whichever man is getting away with something.

Samuel Johnson: Sir, that is an evasion of every duty a judge possesses.

Niccolo Machiavelli: Where you see an evasion, Doctor, I see beautiful footwork.

Samuel Johnson: One caution before we begin. The sums in this quarrel are very large. One state expects to forgive two and a half billion dollars in a single year, and four companies are spending more than seven hundred billion.

Niccolo Machiavelli: And many of the contracts are sealed. So when our fighters are guessing at a figure, we shall make them say so.

Samuel Johnson: That is the nearest thing to a principle I have heard from you this evening.

Niccolo Machiavelli: Do not grow accustomed to it, Doctor.

Samuel Johnson: If this series interests you, please like and subscribe, and pay no attention to the Florentine beside me. He was dismissed from the government of Florence, and he has been offering advice to princes ever since without one of them asking.

Niccolo Machiavelli: Yes, do like and subscribe. And remember that the Doctor’s Dictionary has a word for everything except losing gracefully. He defined a lexicographer as a harmless drudge, which remains the only modest thing he ever wrote and the only accurate one.

Samuel Johnson: I shall see you at the first bell, sir.

Niccolo Machiavelli: I shall be the one enjoying myself.

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Samuel Johnson: Good evening. I am Samuel Johnson, author of A Dictionary of the English Language, and I have been engaged to call a series of six debates from this booth.

Niccolo Machiavelli: I am Niccolo Machiavelli, author of The Prince, and I have been engaged to tell you what is actually happening.

Samuel Johnson: Our subject is the data center. It is a windowless building full of calculating engines, which drinks like a town and draws power like a city.

Niccolo Machiavelli: And our question is a simple one. What if the law treated that building as the thing it resembles, which is a plain warehouse?

Samuel Johnson: Under that rule it may take from the grid only what a warehouse of the same size would take. It may draw from the city main and the aquifer only what a warehouse would draw.

Niccolo Machiavelli: It receives no tax favor written for its industry alone. Whatever else it needs, it must generate, find, or buy at the full price.

Samuel Johnson: Could such a building still turn a profit? Or does the whole enterprise stand upon gifts from people who were never asked?

Niccolo Machiavelli: That is too large a quarrel for one evening, Doctor, so we have cut it into six.

Samuel Johnson: In the first bout, Henry George meets Leland Stanford on whether a state should pay an industry to come.

Niccolo Machiavelli: In the second, William Graham Sumner and Andrew Carnegie dispute who is truly paying the bill.

Samuel Johnson: In the third, John Locke and Jeremy Bentham contest who owns the water under the ground and the air above it.

Niccolo Machiavelli: In the fourth, William Blackstone and Otto von Bismarck argue over whether a farm may be taken for a private customer’s power line.

Samuel Johnson: In the fifth, Sumner returns to face George, for both men despise the subsidy and neither can abide the other’s cure.

Niccolo Machiavelli: And in the sixth, Walter Bagehot and Alexander Hamilton open the ledger and settle whether the thing can pay its own way at all.

Samuel Johnson: Here is how the evenings will run. Before each debate we shall introduce the two men and the stakes. Then we go down to the floor and we do not interrupt.

Niccolo Machiavelli: When the shouting stops, we come back and score it. The Doctor scores on virtue, and I score on victory.

Samuel Johnson: I shall judge who was right, sir, as any honest man would.

Niccolo Machiavelli: And I shall judge who won, which is a different matter and a far more useful one.

Samuel Johnson: Then the audience may rely upon one honest scorecard at least.

Niccolo Machiavelli: The Doctor will now promise to be fair, so do enjoy it.

Samuel Johnson: I must assure the audience that I come to this task entirely without prejudice.

Niccolo Machiavelli: Doctor, you once wrote up the debates of Parliament for a magazine after sitting in the gallery a single time. You confessed that you took care the Whig dogs should not have the best of it.

Samuel Johnson: I saved appearances tolerably well, and I shall do so again.

Niccolo Machiavelli: Whereas I shall simply back whichever man is getting away with something.

Samuel Johnson: Sir, that is an evasion of every duty a judge possesses.

Niccolo Machiavelli: Where you see an evasion, Doctor, I see beautiful footwork.

Samuel Johnson: One caution before we begin. The sums in this quarrel are very large. One state expects to forgive two and a half billion dollars in a single year, and four companies are spending more than seven hundred billion.

Niccolo Machiavelli: And many of the contracts are sealed. So when our fighters are guessing at a figure, we shall make them say so.

Samuel Johnson: That is the nearest thing to a principle I have heard from you this evening.

Niccolo Machiavelli: Do not grow accustomed to it, Doctor.

Samuel Johnson: If this series interests you, please like and subscribe, and pay no attention to the Florentine beside me. He was dismissed from the government of Florence, and he has been offering advice to princes ever since without one of them asking.

Niccolo Machiavelli: Yes, do like and subscribe. And remember that the Doctor’s Dictionary has a word for everything except losing gracefully. He defined a lexicographer as a harmless drudge, which remains the only modest thing he ever wrote and the only accurate one.

Samuel Johnson: I shall see you at the first bell, sir.

Niccolo Machiavelli: I shall be the one enjoying myself.