[southerntofu]

Why are multinational companies who rely on slave labors from the mines to the factories selling for so high prices? (And how is it even legal?) That's a rhetorical question of course.

As for the import taxes, i would guess because electronics are a luxury commodity in many places they are taxed as such. When not used as a luxury good for rich kids to play video games, they're used by industry which makes a lot of money so taxing them makes sense.

Remember many places around the world still don't have reliable electricity (if any at all) or internet infrastructure. Some regions don't even want it as they'd rather preserve their eco-friendly way of life than contribute to the crazy show we've been offering them: first invent new problems (eg. electronics in cars or in agriculture) then sell solutions that will create more problems (eg. mining/refining/factory/landfill pollution).

Most times low-tech is the best answer, and i personally would argue the world and the environment would be much better off if IT/electronics industry were highly regulated and taxed, and had strong obligations to make everything 100% recyclable and actually recycled (also: interoperable, repairable, etc).

[Jonanin]

Wow, I have to say I strongly disagree with every single thing you said.

Video games are a small niche in the universe of technology products. To use them as a justification for classifying all tech as luxury seems, well, extremely stupid and misguided.

I’m surprised you don’t know, but the vast majority of businesses are small businesses with low profits, to act like they have plenty of extra money to spend on heavily taxed goods is ignorant at best. Tech is a productivity multiplier for many businesses, this is not really an arguable point as it is well studied.

By the way, no one is forced to buy tech enabled products (despite the implication in your “crazy show”). People buy tech enabled products over others because they solve their problems better.

And tech products are very low on the list of environmental issues in the world. If the tax was actually structured to promote eco friendly behavior in these countries it’d look wildly different.

You seem to have an axe to grind here but nothing you claim really holds up to a bit of critical thinking. Not sure why an extreme tech pessimist is on HN anyways :)

[southerntofu]

> Video games are a small niche in the universe of technology products

Sure it's a niche but not a small one. Just like cryptocurrency mining, it certainly drives shortages and high prices. My point is that only such specific applications require brand new hardware: for other usecases the second-hand market (which is dominant in the Global South due to tons of containers shipped full of 2nd-hand equipment leaving Global North shores) is more than enough. So in that sense it makes sense to tax the new hardware.

Even without considering the actual applications, taxing new products is a good incentive to keep existing hardware running, which is much better for the environment (most pollution and energy used in the lifecycle of IT is in production).

> By the way, no one is forced to buy tech enabled products

That's definitely not true. Most people who want a car/truck/tractor want a reliable mechanical device, not a random piece of electronic junk with literally hundreds of microcontrollers who can all fail in mysterious ways and are hard to repair (if possible at all). The movement for the right to repair, which is strong amongst agriculture workers, would explain it better than me.

Also, there's plenty of situations where people are forced into owning IT devices. In raising livestock at least here in France, there's mandatory regulations for chipping all animals and equipping your farm with high-tech. Many public services will not talk to you anymore unless you have an email and cell phone to give them. There's probably plenty of other examples from specific fields: i recall friends working in libraries and hospitals mentioning how their IT tools (imposed on them) are driving them crazy and degrading their quality of work.

> And tech products are very low on the list of environmental issues in the world.

That's definitely not true. Please take a look at the stats before making such a claim. If only by CO2 emissions, IT is a great contributor. If you add industrial pollution, IT is one of the worst industries you can think of due to requiring complex multinational supply chains for mining, refining, assembling hundreds of different materials, and failing to recycle billions of devices.

> Not sure why an extreme tech pessimist is on HN anyways :)

Oh i'm not a pessimist. I just think we should not obscure the dark side in what we do. I hope IT can become a field of human emancipation again (helping people accomplish tasks, instead of controlling them) and we can build 100%-recyclable computers as a priority (instead of aiming for more DPI or more GHz). I'm just really sad about the current state of our trade and how computing is used to both destroy the planet and ruin many people's lives :)

[Jonanin]

> Just like cryptocurrency mining, it certainly drives shortages and high prices.

The prices for state of the art graphics cards which are only required for mining or gaming are high, but these products actually -subsidize- or lower prices of more generally useful, simpler tech. Please look into the price history of RAM, simple graphics cards (now builtin to many CPUs, which is very economical!) or any other basic computing components.

> Most people who want a car/truck/tractor want a reliable mechanical device

Please find me any source or other evidence that tractors or cars have gotten any less reliable. All studies done indicate the exact opposite of what you are saying. This sounds like a made-up narrative that you happen to want to be true. See: https://www.motorbiscuit.com/cars-reliability-higher-jd-powe...

And I think you are losing track of the original claims you were making about taxes here. For example:

Do the countries in question actually only tax new products, or ALL tech products?

Tech may be a polluter, but again, your claim was that this is what drives the tax policy. Tell me, do these countries tax oil by the same or a greater amount? It's obviously true that environmental concerns _do not_ drive these tax policies.

Are you going to provide an example of tech hardware being used to "control" people? Would love to see some evidence of this outrageous claim.

And I'm really begging you, when you are about to advocate for very high taxes in this area, to consider the effect it has on small businesses.

[southerntofu]

> Please find me any source or other evidence that tractors or cars have gotten any less reliable

My understanding from friends who work in that industry is that the mechanical parts have gotten more reliable, but cars have gotten less reliable overall due to relying on many micro-controllers and their firmware. I don't find source right now for statistics but i remember reading electronics were ~30% of the price of a new car, and represented the reason for >50% of recalls in the past years in the USA. (I will update with a link when i find the source again)

As for tractors, it's a well-known problem that's been widely discussed on HN regarding John Deere in particular. There's a growing right to repair movement due to the fact manufacturers intentionally make the tractors harder to repair with electronics: https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/why-american-farm...

> Do the countries in question actually only tax new products, or ALL tech products?

Fair question, it would require to take a look at a specific example. In general, i assume taxes mostly apply to new products as the second hand market tends to be undeclared hand-to-hand transactions. For example in France the copyright mafia has imposed private copy "taxes" (technically not a tax, we call it a "redevance" in french) on every second-hand device, but only second-hand shops (eg. backmarket) apply it and >90% of second-hand transactions on markets and platforms like leboncoin are totally unaffected.

> Tell me, do these countries tax oil by the same or a greater amount? It's obviously true that environmental concerns _do not_ drive these tax policies.

I'm not saying that's the reason these taxes exist; i'm saying that's a compelling reason to consider such taxes. As you may know, producing electronics requires tons of coal/oil along the whole industrial process. Also, oil is highly taxed in many countries (including in France where spiking taxes have birthed the gilets jaunes insurrection).

> Are you going to provide an example of tech hardware being used to "control" people?

The NSA/Palantir infrastructure (among others) come to mind. The whole CCTV, facial recognition, and marketing/analytics industry come to mind. Also, bossware solutions whether on your own laptop or dictating work like in Amazon centers. When a facial recognition algorithm gets you to jail, or a bossware algorithm prevents you from peeing on the job because you have to hold the cadence, i'd call that social control without a doubt.

> when you are about to advocate for very high taxes

I'm not advocating for or against taxes. Hell, i'm against money and private property to begin with. I'm simply pointing out that most problems we face today can be solved with less tech not more (lowtech vs bloat), and that tech intended to solve human problems (eg. cars) often end up becoming a radical monopoly doing the exact opposite (see for example Ivan Illich's calculations on cars). I can't help but cringe every time i see a thread about a startup that wants to build automated farms... i really don't to produce more electronics waste just for food, and i certainly don't want electronics garbage seeping into our soils. That's a typical example of an industry trying to invent a problem that's been solved for decades with modern, science-based permaculture techniques.

[jamal-kumar]

Hi OP here

The automation thing makes a lot of sense for food if you aren't growing in soil. Farming is HARD work but if we could grow more with less water (even vapor!) in drought stricken areas I fail to see the drawbacks.

As someone who dwells in the jungle I love permaculture and I think it is pretty cool but I also like the idea of solving mass starvation on a large scale. I don't see what is done here with permaculture feeding the world any time soon, but I also don't even buy bananas because I'm sick of seeing the infinite banana tree fields