The problem is the cost of each. Right now material is dirt cheap and energy prices are going up. And we are not good at long term planning.
Comment on Geologists doubt Earth has the amount of copper needed to develop the entire world
r0ertel@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
This smells a little funny, as others have suggested. I read an article a while ago that suggested that we’re not running out of raw materials; we’re thinking about the problem wrong:
Chachra proposes that we could – we must – treat material as scarce, and that one way to do this is to recognize that energy is not. We can trade energy for material, opting for more energy intensive manufacturing processes that make materials easier to recover when the good reaches its end of life. We can also opt for energy intensive material recovery processes. If we put our focus on designing objects that decompose gracefully back into the material stream, we can build the energy infrastructure to make energy truly abundant and truly clean.
This is all outlined in the book How Infrastructure Works from Deb Chachra.
someguy3@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
NikkiDimes@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
That would be great except for one problem: capitalism. Proper recovery and recycling of materials will never happen so long as production of new materials is cheaper.
interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml 4 weeks ago
Also capitalism’s need for infinite growth has lead us to impose engineered “demand creation” (through advertising) and now even “growth hacking” to supercharge this process. It has made us more wasteful than ever. We are headed into a wall.
booly@sh.itjust.works 4 weeks ago
This is an article about scarcity, insufficient supply to meet demand.
Artificial demand creation isn’t necessary, or even productive, when the existing demand already outstrips supply.
And if it is the case that demand is much higher than supply, that’s a baked in financial incentive that rewards people for efficient recycling.
Capitalism is bad at pricing in externalities. It’s pretty good at using price signals to allocate finite resources to more productive uses.
interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml 4 weeks ago
Ever since the crisis of over production, MAJOR, unceasing psycho-social campaign have been continuously been running not just to foster demand but to ensure it exceeds the planned supply and ensure the price margin always remains on the right side of the curve.
This is the central reason why nearly everyone works ceaselessly to buy things they don’t need and dont have the time nor energy to use.
Sauerkraut@discuss.tchncs.de 4 weeks ago
Markets == capitalism. You can have the efficiencies of free markets (worker owned co-ops which are market socialist) without the all consuming greed of capitalism.