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Comment by naoqj | Hacker News Reader

7.4 mm. (iphone 12)

Is 0.9mm really worth throwing away so many phones?

It's important to remind ourselves that the metals in these phones are mined in part by people with very difficult life conditions, often so bad that they die on the job. We ought to be able to repair what they contributed to build instead of asking them to mine yet another pound of metal just so we can save 0.9mm. This will also reduce need for mining, which creates all sorts of pollution.

I am going to give you a candid answer: I don't give a shit.

That answer is going to sound unpopular here, but deep down is how most people feel.

When did how most people “feel deep down” become a sound policy making strategy?

To be candid: in some matters, the regulators should not give a shit about how you want your phone.

Good for EU and their mandates.

I don't understand. Are you saying that the government should do whatever they want even if it goes against what the majority of the population wants? That is everything but democratic.

Democracy isn't and shouldn't be absolute.

And you do realise that no countries have complete democracy? Even Switzerland with their many referendums doesn't put every decision to a democratic vote. Partly for practical and pragmatic reasons, but also because some things are best not decided by the masses.

The clear point is people that don't "give a shit" about the environment or their fellow people are not the majority and so the government should continue to make environmentally lead decisions regardless of the existence of sociopaths.

Democracy has many flaws, you just identified one of them.

The government frequently makes everyone do things they would rather not do because the aggregate result is good. And the results of the collective action make everyone happy to the point that the law is supported. That's the basis of all tragedy of the commons based laws.

I guess cars would be slightly lighter and faster without seatbelts or airbags.

Or planes would cost slightly less to fly if they were not required to carry safety equipment.

That’s exactly because people like you don’t give a shit and corporations will do anything to save/make a buck that laws and regulations like this have to be made and enforced.

That makes no sense because people won't buy cars without seatbelts or airbags - and if they do, it's them dying, which they should have the freedom to do.

It’s not only the owner of the car dying. It’s also the passengers who may or may not have had a say in the decision. Never mind the cost to society as a whole from medical bills resulting in these preventable injuries, the psychological trauma for survivors/witnesses, or the effect of orphaned children growing up without parents.

Don't you worry, if we keep using the planet like we currently do, and like you do by saying you don't give a shit, then we'll all die soon enough because of our lack of respect for our environment — lack of access to clean water will hit loads of people in the coming decades.

Either that or we come up with laws that keep us competitive without destroying everything around us. I hope that's what Europe will do and I will support regulation that takes a tiny bit of comfort away if it makes us more resilient in the face of climate change and geopolitical difficulties.

I'd say you're dead wrong here - just look at the pushback against seatbelts when the laws were introduced. Look at the devices on sale, today, to defeat seat belt alarms.

Regarding your second point, that's also objectively incorrect. When accidents happen, passengers, especially backseat passengers, become projectiles that cause additional injuries or excess deaths for other occupants. It's not just the dude not wearing a seatbelt dying, it's also the people around them.

> people like you don’t give a shit

Let’s be honest here: This is all of us to some degree. OP is just one of the few that admits it.

Is this all of us to some degree? Or is this you and OP and you tell yourselves it's everyone to make yourself feel better?

Or is your "to some degree" take into accounts degrees so small as to be meaningless?

I interpreted OPs sentiment to be an example of consumerism. Individually, sure, “some degree” could be considered meaningless, but collectively, the sentiment drives supply and production decisions, so no, I don’t think it’s a spurious or meaningless assertion to make.

His point was very clearly about each individual and not cooperative behavior. And I deny that "each individual" doesn't care unless "to some degree" is used to support degrees so small they are approximately nonexistant

I have never seen appealing to personal responsibility drive change at a large scale. Like all creatures, humans are driven by a balance of incentives and disincentives. If you want to drive change, systemically alter the balance. I think the approach of the policy discussed in TFA is aligned with this view.

I’m not sure exactly where we our disagreement lies, but I think it’s a mistake to dismiss small degrees of sentiment as those small degrees manifest as purchase decisions, which collectively manifest as multimillion dollar industries that are supported by those individual actions. Additionally, asserting that someone either cares or doesn’t care and that there’s not some continuum is a false dichotomy.

I agree that systemic changes are important. However, I disagree that personal responsibility cannot drive sufficient behavior. Look at individuals recycling.

But we're talking about this line of discussion. Which was sparked by someday saying they didn't care and no one did. I objected to the latter part of that. It's bullshit that no one cares. There are ethical vegans and people who do all kinds of things because of personal responsibility.

This is one of the central supporting arguments for government regulation: customers won't pick what's better for society, but rather according to their own short-term needs. Since customers don't care, companies don't either (save those that use their environmental concern as part of their marketing...I suspect most of those measures don't really move the needle, though). That leaves only government. I wish it weren't this way, but I can't argue with the evidence.

> I don't give a shit

Applying the golden rule, so why should anyone give a shit about what you think?

Whether you give a shit or not isn't important. Regardless what you personally think, a law is accepted if it's acceptable. And most people will think "OK, I get that we can't continue to throw away phones and keep using some countries as slaves just because we want the latest iPhone now". Just like people in Europe accept to pay more taxes than in other places of the world because we get that solidarity is important.

It's unpopular because it makes you a selfish cunt.

And yes, many, if not most people are selfish cunts in many ways. Myself included.

But that does not make it good. It is something that you, I, and everyone else should be deeply ashamed of.

You don't have to throw those phones away right now. Apple can easily replace batteries for you. The consumer doesn't need to be able to do this with a bigass Philips-head screwdriver in order to accomplish this goal.

If any third party repair shop can replace it, that'd already quite good. But manufacturers have been known to make it impossible even for 3rd party repair shops to do anything, or at least to make their lifes as hard as possible. That's a no-no.

Define "but ass Philips head screwdriver".

You could do this #2 screws which are tiny, use 3-6 of them around the edge. Add a rubber gasket. And you have a water proof battery that is replaceable in under 5 minutes with a precision Philips head (aka those little screwdriver heads you get with the multi-head screwdriver kits)

I don't understand this fetish with thin phones and laptops.

> Is 0.9mm really worth throwing away so many phones?

Quite the opposite. I want larger/heavier devices. Make my phone a bit thicker and heavier and sturdier, please. I feel the same about a laptop. I recently got a new laptop, and the flimsiness of high-end machines was a turnoff. The salesman kept saying "but it's only X lbs, so much lighter" as though that was a selling point. But I want strong hinges, large replaceable batteries, etc. I could care less about 3 vs 7 lbs.

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