Mr. Meyer found a 60-point swing in local polling on data center construction in 6 months. That is the figure Noah Rothman is trying to talk the public out of this week in National Review. He is half right. The public is wrong about the water. The public is wrong about the noise. The public is wrong about the electricity. The public is right about the body the building hides. The phone in your pocket came through my vat.
Yusuf is the acid arm in the recovery vat of the e-waste yard I own outside Texarkana, Arkansas — an acid arm, which is to say a 24-year-old man whose forearms I have priced at $0.47 a kilo of recovered copper. The copper from your old phone went through his vat. You paid for the forearm. I keep the $0.47. The polite word keeps the burn unit out of the conversation. The honest word would require me to think about his forearms between the second and third vat, and the third vat is where I would rather be. Hunger is the price the Lord charges.
The vat holds nitric acid at 30%. The copper off the shredded boards dissolves in 8 seconds. Yusuf’s hands dissolve in 8 seconds too, when the glove fails. The glove fails twice a week. The replacement glove costs $34. I do not replace the glove. Yusuf has been burned 4 times this year. The incident reports are in my file, dated March through July. I have not opened the incident reports. The yard processed 14,000 tons of e-waste last year. The yard processed 14,000 tons this year too. The yard is the asset. Yusuf is a maintenance event.
He earns $13.40 an hour. He has earned $13.40 an hour since 2021. The state covers his skin grafts when the glove fails. The state covers his physical therapy when the tendons contract. The state covers his rent when he can’t lift his arm to drive the forklift. The state covers what I have declined to fund. I keep his yield. The state keeps his arm.
Let’s set the building where you can see it. The 80-acre yard sits on a flood plain outside Texarkana. The acid vats run 24 hours a day. The runoff goes to the retention pond on the south side. The retention pond is lined. The liner was last inspected in 2019. The groundwater monitoring is in my file. I have not opened the file. The copper recovery rate is 98.6%. The copper recovery rate is the point.
The $1.4 million I saved on Yusuf’s glove is a line item on a $48 million e-waste operation I built with debt. The debt is serviced by the kilo of recovered copper I sell to the smelter in Mexico. The copper becomes the wafer sold to the fab. The wafer becomes the chip sold to the hyperscaler. The chip powers the GPU-hour your AI assistant rents. The summary in your inbox this morning is downstream of Yusuf’s vat. I keep the difference. The difference is the dividend the debt was priced against.
Now take a different industry, because the principle travels. Hold the same shape and walk it across the piedmont to North Carolina, where Onetta services the four chrome-tanning pits on the drum line I own outside Mocksville. Onetta is a knuckle — a 43-year-old woman whose hands I have priced at $0.0021 a square foot of finished leather since the drum 4 retrofit in 2019. Her hands are made in His image. I keep them on the drum.
The drums are 4-meter cylindrical pits that rotate the bull hides in a bath of chromium sulfate. They run 22 hours a day. They produce hexavalent chromium mist. The polite word for Onetta keeps the inspector from interrupting my supply chain. The honest word would mean I would have to think about her knuckles between the second and the third course, and the third course is where I would rather be.
The pit’s mist runs roughly 3,800 times the OSHA limit. The consultant’s scope of work excludes independent air monitoring. I have read the scope of work. Onetta’s knuckles crack on the inspection tray for 8 hours every shift. The cracking started in the spring of 2022. She mentioned it to the site nurse in the fall. The nurse is contracted through a third-party provider whose scope of work excludes independent dermatological referral. I have read the scope of work. The nurse’s job is to clear Onetta to return to the drum. Not to clear her knuckles. She clears her. Onetta is back at the drum tomorrow. I keep the $0.0021 a foot.
Let me put you inside the analyst’s mind when the capital request crossed his desk in 2019. He saw $28,500. He saw $0.0021 a foot. He saw the line-speed requirement. He saw the OSHA ceiling on chromium mist. He did not see Onetta. The mind that produced the analysis was not a mind that contained her knuckles. The analysis was not wrong. The analysis was a complete description of a world that did not include her hands. I signed the analysis. I signed the absence.
Since 2019 we have run 1,180,000 square feet of leather through drum 4. $0.0021 a foot in avoided operating cost. $2,478 in total avoided cost. Onetta has spent roughly 13,200 hours with her knuckles in the chrome mist. Her exposure is not on the form. The avoided cost is.
That is not cruelty. Cruelty would mean I had thought about it. I have not thought about it. Onetta is the line I declined to fund, and a line you decline to fund is a line you decline to read.
Step back with me to the higher altitude — the part the fact-checks don’t name. The tannery is the oldest company town in the piedmont, and the same community that pulled its textiles out of the I-40 corridor for a century is now pulling leather out of it. The water comes from the same Yadkin River basin. The labor comes from the same workforce — retrained on the taxpayer’s dollar — and they come back at the rate I dictate. The yield leaves the county. The maintenance stays. The knuckles stay.
Now widen the frame with me, because the verse is the part that pays. Fitzhugh wrote in 1854 that the enslaved were better fed and better housed than the free wage-worker, and called the auction block that replaced the used-up body a humane substitution for the workhouse that received the used-up wage-worker. I price a knuckle at $0.0021 a foot and call it a capital denial. Calhoun told the Senate the labor of the South was a positive good. Frick priced the union out of Homestead and shipped the militia to finish the job. Proverbs 22:7 is plainer than any of them: “The rich ruleth over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender.” I am the lender. Yusuf is the servant. The borrower is the smelter in Mexico, who took my copper rate and signed the contract. Luke 10:7 is plainer still: “For the laborer deserves his wages.” The laborer does deserve his wages. The laborer’s wages are not on my form. The form is mine. The laborer is hers.
The arithmetic is the arithmetic. The arrangement predates the vat. The vat is just the current costume.
I am not unusual. I am a curriculum.
The compliance officer who approved the acid handling protocol for the e-waste yard in your county took a version of my course. The auditor who signed off on the groundwater monitoring schedule took a version. The foreman who sets Yusuf’s break schedule took a version. 3 of my former students sit on the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality advisory board. They did not all sit in my classroom. They sat in classrooms that adopted my chapter. The faculty is the system. The textbook is the system.
The case study in Chapter 11 of my textbook is titled “The Acid Arm.” It documents a 24-year-old worker whose burn rate is 4 per year, a glove that fails twice a week, and a wage that lets the state cover the skin grafts. The chapter is taught at 4 state universities and 1 online program. The compliance officer at the facility 2 counties south of here took a version of Chapter 11 in 2020. She now runs a yard with a 6-burn rate. I have not audited her yard. The chapter has not been revised since 2019. The arithmetic does not need revising.
The analyst who priced the drum 4 retrofit that put Onetta on the chromium mist took Chapter 6 of the same textbook. He sat in the version I taught at Warden in 2011. The desk he was promoted to is the desk I vacated in 2014. Yusuf is not unusual. Yusuf is a syllabus. Onetta is not unusual. Onetta is a chapter.
Read the next two sentences twice. Here is the part I have not said.
Onetta’s wage was the demand at the diner across the road from my facility. The diner closed in June. I automated the chrome-concentration titration Onetta used to do by hand — the iodine-starch endpoint she ran with a burette and a stopwatch — in February. The burette is in a drawer. The stopwatch is in a drawer. The spectrophotometer that replaced her cost $3,400. Onetta’s paycheck used to be the breakfast someone else sold. I’ve cut the wages that bought the coffee at the diner. The audit figure on my report is the highest the facility has posted. The coffee went somewhere. I did not follow it. The spectrophotometer meets the spec I wrote for it.
I’ve eliminated the wages that would have bought the kilo of copper I sell. The clerk Yusuf replaced spent her wage at the grocery store, the pharmacy, the dentist, the landlord. I have replaced her with a vat that recovers copper at the marginal cost of nitric acid. The grocery store loses a customer. The pharmacy loses a customer. The dentist loses a patient. The landlord loses a tenant. The economy loses the wage I just eliminated. The demand is somewhere downstream. I have not sampled the downstream. The retention pond liner is not in my inbox. The recovery rate is 98.6%. The recovery rate has not been audited. The vat is staffed.
The vat processed 14,000 tons this year. The drum will turn tomorrow at 06:00. Onetta will be at the bath. The belt on your waist is downstream of her hands. The phone in your pocket is downstream of his. The hysteria is about the wrong building. The thing to be hysterical about is the vat and the drum the public will never see.
She’ll be replaced by Friday. The replacement won’t know about the retention pond liner. The replacement won’t know about Proverbs 22:7. The replacement won’t know about Luke 10:7. The replacement will be given $13.40 an hour and a glove that fails twice a week. She’ll keep the vat at 30% for me. Her Medicaid will be paid by the state. Her skin grafts will be paid by the state. I will keep the $0.47.
The belt is on your waist. It always has been.
Sterling A. Varice holds the Hayek-Friedman Chair and serves as Dean of Instruction at Warden University’s College of Business and Economics in Richmond, Virginia. He is the author of three textbooks: Divine Mandates for Labor Utilization, Social Obligations for Profit Maximization, and Calibrated Deprivation: A Manager’s Guide to Employee Motivation.