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My point is that electronics should be prohibitively expensive. They have a lot of expensive parts in them. Today's budget iPhone should be something like $2000
by JohnWhigham 5y ago
My point is that electronics should be prohibitively expensive. They have a lot of expensive parts in them. Today's budget iPhone should be something like $2000.
- bitcurious 5y agoThat’s an opinion; not a point. A point would be some justification for why you think that.
- JohnWhigham 5y agoI said it: they have lots of expensive parts in them. They rely on expensive rare earth metals that require lots of capital to extract, and leave wakes of destruction on the landscape. They require lots of plastics that remain inert for thousands of years. If one is spending thousands of dollars on these things, then they better last a long time. Instead we throw them out every other year and begin the cycle anew again.
- KingMachiavelli 5y agoActually there are less expensive parts. The parts are more expensive per unit mass but I bet an iPhone consumes about 1/10 of the raw materials as a early 70/80s entertainment boxes. It still just plastic, metal, glass, etc. The old electronics probably used worse chemicals in production as well. The lithium ion battery is probably the one outlier in that it's unique to mobile electronics but old portable electronics would use dozens of non-rechargeable batteries every year.
- JohnWhigham 5y agoThe lithium ion battery is probably the one outlier in that it's unique to mobile electronics but old portable electronics would use dozens of non-rechargeable batteries every year. Sure, but devices with replaceable batteries are theoretically easier to use longer. The average person buys a mobile phone every other year and discards their old ones. Practically every consumer electronic out there uses rechargeable batteries now which puts a limited lifespan on them.