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On the same line, isn’t it also more expensive for humanity as a whole to keep throwing stuff away just to make and buy more?
by nico 4y ago
On the same line, isn’t it also more expensive for humanity as a whole to keep throwing stuff away just to make and buy more?
- lazide 4y agoSo far, looks like the answer is a clear no. It’s pretty cheap to make stuff at scale. Cleaning something to the point it can be reused safely (without knowing what the prior person did to it), or disassembling something damaged or broken to the point it can be melted down and recycled, is really hard and time consuming. About the only things it makes sense to do this with are stuff made out of highly valuable metals, or are very large (aka big pieces), or where we don’t mind burning the non-recyclable stuff most of the time (aka crushed cars).
- nostrademons 4y agoThe primary cost in the vast majority of products today is labor. Anything that takes less time and less people to make (eg. oil; cheap plastic goods; software; movies) gets cheap and immensely profitable. Anything that requires lots of labor (eg. Lamborghinis & other hand-crafted luxury goods; therapy; health care; college; homes) becomes super expensive. The cost of the actual materials is usually rounding error. This holds as long as you pay people, but I doubt many folks would jump on slavery as a solution to our environmental woes.
- deadfoxygrandpa 4y agoget this: the cost of the raw materials themselves are also primarily in the labor it takes to locate, extract, and process them. it's labor all the way down.
- nico 4y agoWhat’s the cost of environmental impact? It seems like we are missing some costs in our calculations. That labor is not going to be able to keep producing stuff if their environment is wrecked. So what’s the cost of that?