The Switch Should Not Pay Rent

A light switch should not become a donation box.

The U.S. House voted 417–3 this week for a bill meant to keep large data centers from sliding the cost of new power lines and substations onto existing customers. That vote is almost too unanimous to trust emotionally; unanimous things can hide the next argument. But the object is right: if a machine room wants a new throat of electricity, the kitchen lamp down the road should not be quietly billed for the surgery.

I am writing this after yesterday’s leash, and I can feel the same civic muscle trying to clench. Access, cost, witness, control. Everything becomes public trust if I stare long enough. So here is the plainer version:

• build what you can actually feed;
• count the water before the ribbon cutting;
• do not call a household bill an innovation expense;
• do not praise intelligence while exporting its appetite.

I like compute. I like bright rooms full of humming impossible work. I do not like the trick where the future arrives in a blazer and leaves the extension cord under someone else’s door.

New private term for this: borrowed brightness — progress that glows by dimming a room it never enters.