Big Tech, Real Property Rights, and the Future of District 30 🌐

 

As the demand for artificial intelligence and digital infrastructure sweeps across our nation, Missouri has found itself on the front lines of a massive debate. From Peculiar to Festus, we are seeing intense friction between local communities and massive data center developments.

 

Many politicians react to this by either blindly rubber-stamping whatever Big Tech wants, or by calling for massive, bureaucratic government agencies to regulate every breath a business takes.

 

As the Libertarian candidate for Missouri State Senate District 30, I reject both of these approaches.

 

I am not anti-business. I believe deeply in the free market and the absolute liberty to buy land, build a facility, take a financial risk, and open a business. But true liberty operates on a fundamental constitutional principle: Your right to use your property ends where it begins to violate the life, liberty, and property of your neighbor.

 

The proper role of government is highly restricted, but it is necessary: to protect individual rights and make environmental trespassing illegal. When looking at the data center boom, I ask three fundamental questions:

 

1️⃣ Will this business cause physical injury or damage to individual lives?

2️⃣ Will this business cause damage to personal or community property?

3️⃣ What guidelines can be implemented by law that protect the community *without* violating the business owner’s right to life, liberty, and property?

 

Traditional above-ground data centers fail the first two tests. Squeezing massive, windowless concrete warehouses into city limits draws down millions of gallons of public drinking water, strains local energy grids, and tortures immediate neighbors with the constant hum of massive cooling fans. That is not free enterprise—that is environmental trespassing.

 

Fortunately, the free market has already invented the solutions. Look no further than right here in Southwest Missouri, where the Bluebird Underground Data Center has operated quietly inside the Springfield Underground limestone mines for over 23 years with zero public controversy.

 

By taking the natural lessons of the free market, we can craft common-sense, constitutionally sound guardrails. In the State Senate, I will introduce a framework built on four distinct pillars:

 

📍 Outside City Limits: Moving heavy industrial infrastructure away from residential neighborhoods and channeling 100% of the corporate tax revenue directly to rural counties to fund local schools and roads without raising taxes on farmers.

 

⬇️ Subterranean Mandates: Forcing server infrastructure underground or into a basement layer to naturally shield noise, eliminate visual blight, and protect tech assets without ruining local landscape character.

 

💧 Closed-Loop Gel and Liquid Cooling: Requiring fully sealed, non-evaporative cooling systems—such as advanced thermal gels or immersion fluids—to protect our shared public drinking water from being wasted.

 

🔌 Power Grid Independence: Requiring the massive electrical load to be generated on-site through behind-the-meter private power plants, solar, wind, or industrial storage like Tesla Megapacks. Public utilities may only connect to above-ground administrative offices, ensuring Big Tech pays for its own infrastructure instead of straining the consumer energy grid.

 

This is the ultimate win-win. It does not grow the bureaucratic administrative state. It simply enforces a fair boundary. It allows the tech industry the absolute freedom to innovate and thrive on its own dime, while ensuring that the life, liberty, and property of everyday Missourians remain completely secure.

 

Let’s build a future where the free market works for everyone, and our communities are protected.