We are all literally being tricked into bringing home more copper.

I bought a whole ass Samsung S25 In February, only to discover in March that a $6 part and $20 bucks of labor made my S22 perfectly serviceable (needed new USB charging port)

But like a dumbass I bought a phone after 3 years of waiting, and was giddy about it and I'm literally typing on the older phone now.

I have been trying to trick myself into letting devices grow into a more full obsolescence before replacing them, and have had very poor luck in doing so.

Plenty of this is my own impulse control, but plenty of this is by design and marketing, and if enough people are satisfied with their three years old cell phones bad things happen to your 401k and to my friends employed in South Korea.

I realize that this is an infinitesimally smaller amount of copper, Even all-in with accessories, and the institutional and industrial requirements for copper.

But if we don't start to figure out some sort of degrowth, we're going to hit that wall as others have mentioned, and it all seems to start with the marketing demand and design.