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phlux

So here we have:

New-laptop->blender

For your comment we have:

New-machine-->user------------------------->trash/other-user/some-other-market

WTF don't people understand about how wasteful this is?

Also, this machines toxic+precious components are being munger to the point where any hope of recycle is lost. If you aren't already paying attention, countries like China are securing the next 50-100 years worth of natural resources, required for the information age lifestyle, in Africa in such a way that the US will be relatively 3rd world in the next 25 years (with respect to our ability to produce that which we need).

So even though we are focused on the micro - the problem and question are macro.

Please tell me I am misguided, and prove it.

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Can't prove it, that's the sort of thing that's dependant on how guided/misguided you are. ;)

Look at it this way. Our society can operate at at a high scale of efficiency, where everything is used to maximum utility and absolutely nothing is wasted, or it can operate extremely inefficiently. It _only_ makes sense to consider the societal-wide efficiency--as you say, the problem and question are macro. So we can posit some ranking, some percentage of total efficiency.

However, 'Will it blend' is hardly large enough to make a huge dent overall in the larger percent. The resources lost from one netbook per time segment are not comparable to the resources lost in even a tenth of a percent decrease in efficiency, if you pardon the approximation.

Furthermore, 'maximum utility' is rather difficult to determine because 'utility' is variable. It turns out that apparently there's enough 'utility' in making "Will It Blend?" videos that we could even argue that this is positive efficiency!

Do you also get upset when cars and pianos are destroyed for movies and tv shows? Would you have us exert _more_ energy to generate the illusion in order to save good tools?

Yes it is wasteful, we are on the same page there. I just think we have a tendency to focus on isolated examples when the big picture is bigger than we can all really get our heads around.

Christmas is a perfect example, I'd wager a great deal of netbooks will be brought this Christmas that are never used or only used sparingly. Schools force one on every student even if they already have perfectly good laptops (my sister's school has done this).

Our society has all the basic metrics wrong of what is productive and efficient.

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