It started at the end of 2020, when the smartphone I had owned for over five years became hard to charge due to the wearing out of the charger cable and charger port. That phone had been a budget phone without a lot of bells and whistles, yet it had proved extremely reliable. When I began to consider replacing it, I looked on my service provider's website for a suitable candidate. I found that most of the budget smartphones looked extremely clunky and had very poor user ratings. I also found that the cost of most of the highly rated smartphones was on the order of $1,000. I hate spending money, but I have been told that buying things that are cheap can cost as much as buying things that are more expensive, due to the cost of regularly replacing the cheap things. So I narrowed my search to phones in the $500 price range.
This led me to the Google Pixel 4A 5G, a phone whose features included 128 GB of memory, awesome speakers and sound quality, a stunning set of cameras capable of stunning photography even at night, impressive battery life, and a durable front composed of tough Gorilla Glass 3. I plonked down $500 and soon the phone was delivered to me. I did not want to take chances with breakage, so along with the phone I bought a highly rated phone case for added protection.
I had hoped that the phone would last me four or five years, but it actually lasted from January to October 2021, when it was destroyed by a drop of less than three feet. Its tough phone case provided no protection at all, and its Gorilla Glass 3 screen shattered along with the tempered glass screen protector I had installed. Seeing $500 shattered like a smashed bag of potato chips quite naturally perturbed me, so I contacted Google to find out what recourse I had. I was directed to an authorized Google repair shop where one of the employees told me that the screen could be repaired for $300, but that the repair shop could not guarantee that the phone would function as it had before it was dropped. The employee also informed me that in the future I could lower any potential phone repair costs by purchasing either "phone insurance" or a "phone protection plan." I gave that employee an earful of clean, yet disapproving language, then left.
Finding myself once again in the position of needing a phone that could be reliably charged, I visited one of the stores of my telecom service provider to see what I could find. I told my tale of woe to the employees at that store and asked them if they sold a reliable smartphone that could stand being dropped without breaking or being used in the rain without being ruined. They led me to a phone sold under the Cat brand. (That's "Cat" as in Caterpillar - you know, the company that makes gas turbines, standby and prime power generators, and earth-moving equipment.) The particular phone in question was the Cat S62, a phone advertised by Caterpillar as "...the pinnacle of innovation, functional design and rugged durability. Designed primarily for extreme work conditions..." It too cost around $500!
I was still under the influence of cultural conditioning that told me that I "needed" a smartphone, so once again I parted with my hard-earned cash for a new phone. I found that the Cat S62 had only a mediocre camera and mediocre speakers. However, it was possible to hand-wash and hand-disinfect the phone without damaging it. And the service provider who sold it to me had a 14-day no-questions-asked return/refund policy. Moreover, Cat had a 30-day no-questions-asked return/refund policy. Unfortunately for me, my troubles began at about day 60 of my ownership. I found that the phone would suddenly and randomly change settings without being touched. Alarm settings, Bluetooth settings, connectivity settings, media playing settings, volume - all would randomly change from time to time - regardless of whether I was holding the phone or not. At first this happened only occasionally. But over time, the number and extent of seizures this phone was having began to escalate. Soon it was turning its flashlight on and off randomly. The last straw for me came last night, when all by itself the phone called a friend of mine after 11 pm, when he, his wife, and his kids were all in bed. I realized that once again, $500 of my money had been turned to garbage. (Perhaps that phone needs an exorcist!)
Today I have bought an old-fashioned flip phone for less than $100. Once I have waited the obligatory 3 days for any COVID-19 virus particles to die from the packaging, I will try out my latest new phone. God willing, it will either break within 14 days or last several years. But buying three phones within a year has got me thinking - first and foremost, about the smartphone industry as a symptom of an unsustainable economy. For the companies that comprise the tech sector are largely publicly traded. And as I understand things, that means that like all publicly-traded companies, their share prices on the open market are a function not only of profit levels, but of profit growth. It is profit growth that drives the passive income streams that form the basis of the retirement incomes of most people and the revenue streams of those aspirational souls who seem to be disciples of people like Tim Ferriss. Profit growth causes rising share prices and rising dividends. Profit growth is also the backbone of an economy built on usury.
The problem comes when profits cease to grow. Slowing or stagnating profit growth can have a variety of causes, but one prime cause is that eventually companies that make durable things face market saturation - that is, they reach the point where if a widget costs $1,000 and lasts 10 years, a stage is reached in which by year seven or eight of a widget-making economy's life, almost everyone who wants a widget now owns one. That means that the market for widgets declines rapidly to a level in which companies sell only enough widgets to replace the widgets that are wearing out. This phenomenon is what almost drove the Ford Motor Company out of business during the 1920's. That means that companies must resort to ever more creative (and unnatural) strategies in order to maintain some semblance of profit growth.
One such strategy is the emergence of a throwaway culture, a culture of restless dissatisfaction with the status quo. Another such strategy is the strategy of planned obsolescence. Both these strategies tend to lead to increasingly feature-packed, yet fragile and unreliable products. The rate of increase of prices of these products tend over time to strongly exceed the rate of inflation. Thus most cars nowadays cost as much as a four-bedroom house used to cost in the 1970's. And the price of smartphones has risen to the point that you can buy a smartphone for $2,000 if you so choose. (That $2000 phone is, not surprisingly, easy to break and hard to fix, according to one source.) Oh, by the way, have you bought a cutting-edge model of a new home appliance like a washer or dryer lately? Along with the strategies of throwaway culture and planned obsolescence, there is the rise of "influencer culture" - the creation of armies of paid, immaculately coiffed shills who pretend to be ordinary people who just happened to become famous and who wish to share their tastes in consumerism with the rest of us.
Yet another unnatural and unsustainable strategy is the strategy of rent-seeking. This is especially prevalent in the world of software nowadays, with the rise of the "software-as-a-service" (SaaS) model of commerce - a model which actually contributes no real value to customers, but which makes businesses vulnerable to data loss and data theft. Rent-seeking is also now a feature of that portion of the "knowledge" industry that sells textbooks - Pearson, for instance, has begun to offer rent-only versions of textbooks that can only be accessed by an online subscription. Titles offered under such terms usually cannot be obtained in hardcopy form.
I believe that a feature of "late capitalism" (as in, "late-stage capitalism") is the seeking of ever-more unnatural and perverse mechanisms and strategies to maintain profit growth. This is leading to an increasingly distorted society and the creation of ever-higher mountains of freshly obsolete junk. These mechanisms are the last desperate ploys of the few who have amassed ungodly amounts of capital by fleecing the many who are not rich. And I believe that the society resulting from these ploys will one day come to an end. When it does, the times that emerge will require a very different sort of person - one who can be satisfied with living on the fruits of an honest day's labor. Unfortunately, many people may have a very hard time making the transition.
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