| > 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 :) |
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.