If people are freezing in their homes, then damn any availability agreement a datacenter has.

I'm inclined to agree, because I think our civilization should exist to serve humanity, not use humanity simply as another disposable cog in the machine.

But that's not the way our legal and political system actually works.

I don’t disagree with anything you’re saying, but you’re confusing “what is” for “what ought to be”. It’s Hume’s classic “is-ought problem”.

Edit: I’ve interpreted the second part of your comment as an objection to the first part, but if that wasn’t the intended message it’s my bad :)

I don't think I'm confusing the two.

I'm suggesting that what I think ought to be the way the world works in fact is not the way it actually works.

This is a criticism of our current system, not using it as a reason to dismiss the idea of changing it to something better.

Agreed, but one hopes said datacenter isn't hosting, say, the utility company's dispatching systems...

If you shut down the datacenter, then all of the folks that rely on IoT-controlled furnaces will freeze in _their_ homes!

Smart thermostats all fall back to offline manual operation.

I'm sorry, but that's on the datacenter provider to put their operations in such a free-market state. The fact that we would suggest that datacenters be allowed to run freely, and then tell residents that they need to stock up on batteries as opposed to mandating a winterized network is kind of appalling.

Datacenters should be able to stay online even with a full power cut. If your datacenter can't go days without mains power, you need to move datacenters.

This is reasonable, but the grid should support such separation then. Each building needs to be connected to a known tier of power grid, and parts of one building may need different tiers: e.g. an ICU that should stay powered no matter what vs the rest of the clinic that could afford to lose power without hurting anyone.

Unless it's already built, it's rather expensive to rebuild.

I don't think residential customers are any less strict with their minimum needs.