Comment on China's rare earth export restrictions threaten global chipmaking supply chains
9tr6gyp3@lemmy.world 1 day agoIts not rolling back the clock imo. We have already pulled out those resources. They are in our possession. We don’t need to mine fresh rare earth metals.
partial_accumen@lemmy.world 1 day ago
So if your policy goes into place, all extraction of rare earth materials stops at, lets say, midnight. We’ve got some spares on the shelf, but without replenishment, and knowing that replen will never come from virgin materials again, those components are horded.
With the global knowledge of this, industry and consumers rush to buy up remaining stock. In three months most electronics stores will be bare electronics. This includes mobile phone stores too. In about 2 months we’ll see new automobile supplies dry up because specific critical control modules simply can’t be built new anymore. Most cars on the road today will break, and simply be parked or scrapped because replacement parts are simply non-existent.
Existing deployed systems all over the world will start to break and not be fixed anymore. Simple things like digital signage at stores will break and remain dead or be ripped out altogether. Lines (queues) will be much longer as many kiosk driven activities now have to be done by humans. Think airport or train check in. Delays in post or package shipping will increase as transport infrastructure starts to break down.
Most of the western world will still have food for many months, but variety will decline dramatically. Anything delivered by aircraft will suddenly cost much MUCH more money because carriers will be trying to keep low hours on now (mostly) un-repairable aircraft.
New computers will start getting bigger again and slower again. Much of the benefits of these materials making computers smaller, faster, and require less electricity.
It will take probably a decade for your recycling program to come online at any scale that can replace what we have for supply chain right now. Even then, recycling can’t easily replace some of the materials as they are bonded chemically during time of manufacture so many lower cost semiconductors simply stop being made.
None of this speaks to the massive economic impact to the world where tens of millions of jobs start to disappear because the world they did relied on affordable devices which are now a premium priced item. Economic upheaval felt by this will make the tariff war we’re going through right now seem like an ideal fantasy.
It will be very eerie to watch our societies and technologies slowly crumble before our eyes and things that were considered near throwaways be now treasured relicts of the past of an age of abundance.
9tr6gyp3@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Honestly, I couldn’t have put it into better words than that. That perfectly defined that transition that we need to head into. We have to start now We need to work together to make this happen. We need to see this capitalist society go away and we need to move into something more sustainable. If we are going to go into a massive economic disruption, then we need to make it worthwhile. We need to build within the shellof the old with what we already have. All of that sounds painful, but if we want to move into a world where we won’t kill the planet, we must do it. The sooner the better.
partial_accumen@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Lots of people will likely die if this goes forward. You’re okay with that? Are you okay with being one of the dead?
9tr6gyp3@lemmy.world 1 day ago
If anyone dies, its because those with resources are not cooperating and helping make sure we can feed and house everyone. We can do this without anyone dying, as long as we all work together.