For a modern analogy: we treat gold as a luxury good we convert into prized jewelry and yet we use it to make disposable technology we carelessly throw away onc

For a modern analogy: we treat gold as a luxury good we convert into prized jewelry and yet we use it to make disposable technology we carelessly throw away once no longer fit for use. And although of course the amounts of precious metals in modern hardware are minute compared to that in luxury jewelry, we still send that hardware scrap over to underdeveloped countries where the precious metals are extracted with great harm to health and lives. If anything, picking up the arrows, spears and swords off a battlefield is a much easier, safer and more rewarding process, making the use of precious bronze for those wares much less wasteful and frivolous.