Huang: The $12 Gongkai Phone

Posted Apr 19, 2013 3:20 UTC (Fri) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582)
In reply to: Huang: The $12 Gongkai Phone by karim
Parent article: Huang: The $12 Gongkai Phone

I think what you're missing is that all things get commodified. Wristwatches have been commodified for decades but Rolex et al still have a market - even though they offer literally no value over a $5 watch off the pavement. A top end Galaxy or iPhone does offer value over a $12 phone. The top end will survive. But people who simply could not afford that have alternatives now.

As for the markets thing - as China gets less competitive to manufacture in, some manufacturing will move back to the developed world (it's happening already) and their economies will improve.

The bigger concern is what all this manufacturing is doing to the environment, climate, food security...

Huang: The $12 Gongkai Phone

Posted Apr 19, 2013 11:10 UTC (Fri) by pboddie (guest, #50784) [Link] (5 responses)

The bigger concern is what all this manufacturing is doing to the environment, climate, food security...

I'm glad that at least one other person cares about these things more than the financial gymnastics involved. Presumably being in the cross-hairs of "decadent western pig"-style rhetoric (most likely coming from someone else in that demographic), I will hold off on the lecturing for a moment to admit that making things affordable does give everyone new opportunities, whether it just makes their lives better or whether it allows people to experiment and develop new things that would previously have been beyond their means.

What worries me more is the conditions under which these things are made, how the materials are sourced, where all the waste goes (both during manufacture and after the product has failed and been replaced by its purchaser), and so on. Those of us who are the target demographic for all these gadgets really are living in the future we once dreamed of (for the most part, given that we're not living in space or anything completely fantastic like that), but the people making the goods are living in something with more similarities to the past we studied (or should have been studying) in history lessons.

And then one has to consider the factors at work that prevent humanity from learning from, or not simply repeating, its past.

Huang: The $12 Gongkai Phone

Posted May 1, 2013 19:05 UTC (Wed) by wookey (guest, #5501) [Link] (4 responses)

"I'm glad that at least one other person cares about these things more than the financial gymnastics involved."

You can put me in that bucket too. There are physical 'limits to growth' which will eventually cause real difficulties, even for the rich countries. There is very little sign that the current economy or societal arrangements are good at dealing with this, and it remains unclear that we will succeed in preventing everything going to crap during my lifetime. If I had children I'd be _really_ worried.

I'd like to see a lot more people trying to work out how you get from here to a 'circular economy': http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_economy

Huang: The $12 Gongkai Phone

Posted May 2, 2013 5:59 UTC (Thu) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (3 responses)

> There are physical 'limits to growth' which will eventually cause real difficulties, even for the rich countries.

reminds me of studies from the 1800's showing that there were real pysical limits to growth limiting how big a city could get (based in large part on the amount of manure generated by the horses needed for transportation of goods into the cities)

I have great faith that when it matters people will come up with new ways of doing things that extend the limits way beyond what anyone today can imagine.

I may be wrong, but the naysayers have been wrong throughout history, so I think my optimism is standing on the right side of the odds :-)

Huang: The $12 Gongkai Phone

Posted May 2, 2013 10:12 UTC (Thu) by wookey (guest, #5501) [Link] (1 responses)

This is a common argument, and you are quite right that people have been wrong about specific limits in the past, but to take that on to claim that there will be no physical limits ever seems to me to be pretty obviously wrong. You can't increase both population and consumption in a space of a defined size forever. Something has to give.

I agree that it is extremely difficult to say in advance when you will hit a problem that can't be technologically-adapted round. But at some point you will run out of _something_ (space/energy/soil/minerals/rest of ecosystem). The modelling of this shows that it's much easier to get a population crash than stability or gentle decline when this happens, which is almost certainly unpleasant for those involved. ('Limits to Growth' is a very good book on the subject). And understanding EROEI is important too.

But you are quite right that it could be significantly longer than 40 years time (the odds are quite good on that).

Huang: The $12 Gongkai Phone

Posted May 4, 2013 15:16 UTC (Sat) by apoelstra (subscriber, #75205) [Link]

> This is a common argument, and you are quite right that people have been wrong about specific limits in the past, but to take that on to claim that there will be no physical limits ever seems to me to be pretty obviously wrong. You can't increase both population and consumption in a space of a defined size forever. Something has to give.

Well, at some point there will be so many people that nobody has room to move around and reproduce. I'm with the optimists here that we won't hit any "real" limits before this one -- roughly 1/3 of the earth's surface is solid land, while all of the earth's -volume- contains natural resources (the usual suspects, plus nuclear isotopes, plus geothermal energy, plus biomass...), and there is also ~1kW/m^2 of sunlight hitting half the planet at all times.

We don't even know what's at the bottom of the oceans, or what exactly is below the earth's crust.

And there are tons more resources in other parts of the solar system.

Huang: The $12 Gongkai Phone

Posted May 2, 2013 15:56 UTC (Thu) by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454) [Link]

Yes, humans manage to extend limits sometimes. But it is not by far the general case. You can find the remains of people that didn't succeed on all continents, from ruined cities to once-rich now-desertified countryside. And once the world village integration is finished, there will be no one else to pick up the flag in case of extension failure.

It's foolish to assume problems just solve themselves.