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We got back slave labour and offshored manufacturing pollution.

Personally, I'd rather pay extra for high quality goods made ethically than some planned obsolescence or plastic garbage.



> Personally, I'd rather pay extra for high quality goods made ethically than some planned obsolescence or plastic garbage.

Nitpicking a little, but the Chinese also make high quality stuff. It is not advertised as much though.


Sometimes, but how are the workers treated, and how "sustainable" is the manufacturing?


> offshored manufacturing pollution

One might be tempted to say that offshoring the manufacturing pollution was the point - the Silicon Valley is the US' top Superfund site for a reason [1]. Now it's not Western countries that get to deal with the legacy of a few decades of exploitative capitalism, it's China, Taiwan and India which are out of sight, out of mind to us.

> Personally, I'd rather pay extra for high quality goods made ethically than some planned obsolescence or plastic garbage.

Indeed but that's a niche market which means R&D costs alone make products so much more expensive that it's basically impossible to compete... and for the stuff that is made domestically, manufacturers love to go for "planned obsolescence" and other strategies to turn consumer spending into recurring revenue - always remember BMW and subscription seat heaters.

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/09/silic...




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