In my years, I've often learned that only necessity will push people towards solutions. In this case with copper, only once we have used up most of the copper a

In my years, I've often learned that only necessity will push people towards solutions. In this case with copper, only once we have used up most of the copper available easily will we truly start to care about extracting it in more efficient ways, whether it be through recycling or other means. If it's too easy to do the naive way, people just won't care about efficiency enough to do it the hard way. It's the same thing in software with bloat even as hardware gets faster. Rather, it is precisely because hardware gets faster that software engineers have little regard for the speed of their software, since any inefficiences will be overshadowed by the horsepower of the raw silicon. What Andy giveth, Bill taketh away, I've always known, but now I see it everywhere, not just in software.