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June 26, 2008

| The War Council >>

O Canada

Great note at the bottom of Chris Anderson’s latest blog post.

The setup: He’s just talked to a guy who runs massive server farms — the kind that acts as substrate for Amazon’s EC2 and similar systems. Many are in Washington and Oregon because of the cheap, clean electricity. The juice is even cheaper and cleaner in Canada… but Mr. Server Farm won’t go north of the border:

Why not? Because of political instability. Canada’s governments shift from right to left too often, he said, and the threat of regional secession was too real to risk putting multi-hundred-million-dollar data facilities there—between changes in the laws to even the slight risk of nationalization should the wrong person be elected, he thought Canada’s political liabilities outweighed its energy assets.

I love that! Because I have officially never thought of Canada as being in any way risky.

Robin-sig.gif
Posted June 26, 2008 at 9:04 | Comments (4) | Permasnark
File under: Briefly Noted

Comments

He should locate a server farm there and insure the facility against the risks. There are insurance contracts thata cover nationalizations, not sure about law changes.

- PoN

Posted by: pon on June 27, 2008 at 05:52 AM

Also, I agree with the comment thread on that blog: dude is a nut. Canada is pretty stable, respects the rule of law, and has property rights.

No doubt there are risks at some (low level), but I'm guessing the cost of insuring against them are also pretty low, basically the same as insuring against them in the US.

Posted by: PoN on June 27, 2008 at 06:06 AM

I don't know. There's something about Canada that just seems... iffy. Don't they still have the Queen on their money? What if she dies? Is it still good? And didn't the glaciers come through there. Color me skeptical.

Yeah, stack up the nationalization insurance w/ the glacier insurance and the polar bear insurance, and you're looking at a heavy burden...!

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