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Why I'm not getting a Fairphone*
(lemm.ee)
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this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2023
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I have a few better (in my opinion) motives to why I am not getting any fair phone:
• There's not such a thing like ethical consume under capitalism.
• It isn't environmental good to change from a working phone to anything.
• The new costs above $600 and the old ones costs around $400. This is a bunch of money and here in my country is almost 2 monthly minimum wages, without taxes, of course.
So I am sticking with my old Samsung, thank you.
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What's the conclusion of this claim? That we shouldn't consume anything at all? That it doesn't matter what we consume as it all is equally unethical?
Even if you believe that all consumption is unethical, there are still differences in impact and effect depending on what we consume and how much we consume.
Of course not, but who is urging people to replace their new/working smartphone with a fairphone?
From a price/quality perspective, the fairphone has always been "bad".. You pay the price of a upper mid smartphone and get older mid tech. That's because the fairphone's main appeal is it's modularity and their focus on "sustainable" production, which of course has it's price.
If your main focus is price and affordability, the fairphone is a bad choice.
First: nothing you buy will ever be free from exploitation under this system.
Second: buying one product over another will make no difference in society and the world.
Actually, this second conclusion is also a derivation of another statement: individuals do not change a society, collectives do. Boycotts, which are another attempt at conscious consumption, sometimes manage to shut down companies, but they never manage to end the harmful production pattern that these companies were applying in the first place.
And that doesn't mean we should stop consuming everything, because it's impossible to live without consuming.
In the end, conscious consumption only serves to feel good (falsely) about yourself. What is an honest reason to do something.
Ok but again, even if you think so, there are still different degrees of exploitation. Saying "nothing I buy will ever be free from exploitation" can also be used as an argument not to care about exploitation at all..
Of course it will.. You can argue that the difference it makes is so small that it is essentially 0, but it still makes a difference..
Just because you buying a more sustainably produced smartphone doesn't solve all the problems in the world doesn't mean that it has 0 impact..
No, it also demonstrates a way to improve something, even if that improvement is minuscule.. It also shows the potential issues and problems that come with it.. I would never claim that somebody buying a fairphone is changing the world, of course that would be ridiculous. Individual consumer choices indeed don't have a big impact on systemic issues.