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A comment on OpenAI's cash burn will be one of the big bubble questions of 2026. Parent comment

Re:OpenAI's cash burn will be one of the big bubble question... by zdragnar on Tuesday December 30, 2025 @05:57PM (#46439138)
There are arguments aplenty that schooling and a minimum amount of healthcare are public goods, as are roads built on public land (the government owns most roads after all).

What is the justification for considering data centers capable of running LLMs to be a public good?

There are many counter examples of things many people use but are still private. Clothing stores, restaurants and grocery stores, farms, home appliance factories, cell phone factories, laundromats and more.

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Re:OpenAI's cash burn will be one of the big bubble question... by reverserdev on Tuesday December 30, 2025 @06:45PM (#46439588)
Libraries with books are likely considered public goods right?

Why not an LLM datacenter if it also offers information? You could say it's the public library of the future maybe.

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Re:OpenAI's cash burn will be one of the big bubble question... by zdragnar on Tuesday December 30, 2025 @07:01PM (#46439743)
Not all libraries are publicly owned or accessible. Most are run by local municipalities because they wouldn't exist otherwise.

Data centers clearly can exist without being owned by the public.

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Re:OpenAI's cash burn will be one of the big bubble question... by bjt on Tuesday December 30, 2025 @07:45PM (#46440046)
So can bookstores.
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Re:OpenAI's cash burn will be one of the big bubble question... by wahnfrieden on Tuesday December 30, 2025 @06:08PM (#46439233)
a distinction: the data centers have become the means of production, unlike clothing from a store
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Re:OpenAI's cash burn will be one of the big bubble question... by zdragnar on Tuesday December 30, 2025 @06:58PM (#46439711)
How is that distinct from any of my other examples which listed factories? Very few factories in the US are publicly owned; citing data centers as places of production merely furthers the argument that they should remain private.
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