Well, maybe he's happier this way? There's a classic joke about a lifelong smoker talking to a stop-smoking councillor:
"With all the money you've spent on cigarettes in your lifetime, you could have bought a Ferrari."
"Do you smoke?"
"No."
"Then where's your Ferrari?"
It's a good question. Most of us have the financial capability to be extremely extravagant with a few select areas of our life, but instead we average everything down to boring mediocrity.
The labor and physical footprint needed to produce modern electronics is completely insane. You're comparing little league basketball to major league baseball, and it's not like a player like Framework is going to change this at all.
There is a severe ecological impact to the wider environment that comes from electronics, let's not kid ourselves. That doesn't mean buying electronics makes you like, a terrible person, but if you're sitting around prostheyzing on blogs like Doctorow about how these companies are killing you, it's a bit funny to essentially go from a thing that kills people you know in the first world to one that only kills people in the third world you never cared for. Modern comforts like cutting edge electronics have extreme externalities. Like, okay, let me just throw the "murders people I care about" problem over the fence, where it will surely not be an issue for all those people halfway across the planet from me (that I coincidentally do not care or think about.)
In general I'm not trying to be too hard. It's not like anyone else deals with this level of cognitive dissonance much better, and I say that as someone who mostly quit cold turkey over a year ago...
>it's a bit funny to essentially go from a thing that kills people you know in the first world to one that only kills people in the third world you never cared for
I feel like you're not really representing his argument on why he quit fairly. He does talk about the effects of tobacco on the developing world for one and also his overall reason seems to be more relating to the wider idea of tobacco companies being pioneers in the misinformation industry.
My mom smoked for about 45 years and stopped the day she found out she was having a grand daughter. She didn't want to smell like smoke around her. Hasn't touched a cig in years. The whole family is better for it.
"With all the money you've spent on cigarettes in your lifetime, you could have bought a Ferrari."
"Do you smoke?"
"No."
"Then where's your Ferrari?"
It's a good question. Most of us have the financial capability to be extremely extravagant with a few select areas of our life, but instead we average everything down to boring mediocrity.